Dev Hynes on his new music as Blood Orange, fluid sexuality and why he still suffers from panic attacks

He’s mates with Florence and Alexa and has the critics in raptures. But Dev Hynes, aka Blood Orange, still has panic attacks backstage. The east-London born star talks to Craig McLean  
Michael Levine
Craig McLean28 July 2016

Outside, the sun is blazing — but in the shady dining room of Lancaster Gate’s Columbia Hotel, Dev Hynes is dressed for midnight. Sitting straight-backed and perfectly upright, he’s wearing black dungarees, a long-sleeved black T-shirt, black sneakers and an artfully too-small black baseball cap. ‘I didn’t notice! I must have missed it,’ he chuckles goofily when I point out the sunshine. He seems less transatlantic cultural titan and more Hackney art student.

Yet he is, undoubtedly, the former: writer of quirky electropop for big-hitting pop divas (Florence Welch, FKA Twigs and Solange Knowles) creator of shimmering soundtracks (most recently for the Gia Coppola-directed Palo Alto), illustrator and author of multiple short stories and comics. And then there’s his own music. He’s just released Freetown Sound, his third album under the stage name Blood Orange (imagine a Prince-tastic take on The Weeknd) and the critics are, predictably, in raptures.

Hynes wears his supercool status lightly. He’s relaxed and refreshingly honest — open about his sexual orientation: not gay, not straight; tried sex with men but ‘it wasn’t my thing’; has dated transgender people. Ditto his relationship status: no longer with the equally fluid singer Samantha Urbani; he’s currently seeing ‘a couple of people’. ‘Things are fluid,’ he beams. ‘I think a lot of people look at me and think, “No, it’s strong if you define yourself and it’ll be helpful to others.” But I think they don’t realise that I’m not hiding in not defining myself. I’m openly not defining myself. To me, that’s the school of Bowie and Prince, where they were just themselves.’

One of three children born to a nurse from Guyana and a Sierra Leonean former manager at Marks & Spencer, Hynes was confounding expectations as far back as he can remember. Growing up in Ilford, east London, ‘I was painting my nails and doing stuff like that.’ He was also a keen dancer, with a penchant for tap and ballet. ‘I had a pretty supportive home with things that I wanted to do. And the people I went to school with at Chadwell Heath were pretty supportive.’ His introduction to music came via the piano and cello lessons in which his parents enrolled him as a child. ‘I was playing cello, but also rapping, in bands and skating.’

With Katy Perry at Coachella in 2014

Not everyone was so accepting. He had names hurled at him, such as ‘faggot’, and has spoken of being spat at while riding local buses. ‘It was kinda insane — once I got to school it was like a safe space.’ Was this abuse homophobic, or racist? ‘It was mainly black kids doing it. There was a sense that I was different to them. White people didn’t really give a f***.’

Music was a refuge. At 18 Hynes joined dance-punk outfit Test Icicles. The trio signed to Domino and released their sole album in 2005 but by the following year had split, and Hynes reinvented himself as Lightspeed Champion, releasing a further two singer-songwriter albums and becoming friends with the likes of Alexa Chung, Peaches Geldof and Florence Welch — part of the original Dalston scene. The name Blood Orange was adopted in 2009 and its in this guise that he’s achieved his greatest mainstream success, winning rave reviews for the albums Coastal Grooves (2011) and follow-up Cupid Deluxe (2013).

Remarkably, Hynes has synaesthesia — the sensory-overlapping condition when sounds come with colours and sights have a smell. How does it feel playing festivals and gigs, complete with the lights, the cheers of fans, and the smell of food and alcohol? ‘It’s pretty overwhelming,’ he smiles. ‘I spent a lot of time [at British Summer Time festival] in the dressing room. Because it is a bit much, I don’t really do festival stuff, which I guess is linked to the synaesthesia. I can get headaches and panic attacks. But sometimes I’ll shut it off and push through for the sake of the performance.’

Really, it’s the studio that’s his comfort zone. Freetown Sound has an appropriately eclectic selection of collaborations; Hynes tapped Debbie Harry to sing on the album after becoming good friends with the Blondie frontwoman as a result of producing the legendary band’s next album. The appearance of Noughties pop star Nelly Furtado on standout song ‘Hadron Collider’ came after they were introduced by the Talking Heads’ David Byrne.

At this year’s Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee in June

Hynes has become famous for such hook-ups. He worked on the FKA Twigs song ‘Hours’, from her 2014 debut album LP1 — though got into a social-media beef with both Solange (whose 2012 breakthrough EP, Play, he co-produced) and Sky Ferreira (with whom he wrote 2013’s Eighties synthpop jam ‘Everything Is Embarrassing’) over song authorship. Solange suggested that Hynes’ role in her music was exaggerated, while Ferreira was quoted saying it ‘bothered’ her that Hynes sings on ‘Everything is Embarrassing’. ‘I’m really good friends with both of them again,’ he says now. ‘I honestly think it was press eating up and spitting out our words... Then it was that stupid thing of just not talking to the person to clear things up.’

Wasn’t he tempted to think, ‘forget writing for other artists — too many egos, too many record company politics’? ‘It’s definitely happened a bunch of times that I’ve gone out of my way for people and it’s been thrown back in my face.’ Indeed, when he worked on Britney Spears’s 2013 album Britney Jean, his contribution didn’t make the final cut. ‘I don’t think that song even got to her,’ he shrugs, adding: ‘It felt weird ’cause when I was writing that stuff, I was only ever writing from a fan perspective — what I want to hear from them.’

The rows with Solange and Ferreira aren’t the only times Hynes has been at the centre of a social-media storm. Having moved to New York in his early 20s, in December 2013 the West Village apartment he shared with then-girlfriend Urbani caught fire due to poor wiring. He lost everything, including his puppy, Cupid. In response, Urbani’s mother set up a ‘Help Dev!’ GoFundMe site without his knowledge. It raised £14,850 but was closed at Hynes’s request, with him pledging to give the money to charity — though not before The Guardian published an article online criticising the campaign. The subsequent fallout saw him denounce the article as ‘disgusting’ and the likes of Cheryl Fernandez-Versini waded in to lend their support. Today, Hynes is sanguine about the experience. ‘I always said that I was happier that I lost everything and not, like, half. I was grateful for that — starting from half would just be weird.’ Did he lose any songs? ‘Oh, loads,’ he says. ‘But I was just, like, whatever… I’m very “whatever” about music. I love it and it’s my favourite thing but it’s all in the mind anyway.’

These days he’s happily ensconced in Brooklyn, though he’s making the most of his time in the capital. After we meet he’s heading off to see his parents in Essex. He says ‘it took a while’ for them to understand their genre-defying son’s music. ‘But last year I did these two shows at the Harlem Apollo, and that was the first time on a bigger stage that I’d played solo cello. My sister filmed it and sent it to my mum. Seeing me play an instrument that she saw me play in the house when I was 11 made the connection for her. Finally, those lesson fees paid off.’

Freetown Sound (Domino) is out now

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