I let Dev Hynes pick the place for us to jump-start this interview, and he chose the slickly stylized, Jamaican-themed joint Miss Lily’s, smack dab in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village. A convivial meeting hub for artists, intellectuals, tourists, and anybody jonesing for jerk chicken, the colorful restaurant happens to be blocks away from the legendary cafés, clubs, and haunts once populated by Lorraine Hansberry, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, and way too many other iconic notables to list here. Hynes and I both happen to be born to Caribbean parents—his mother is Guyanese; my parents hail from Trinidad—and we’re also both downtown New York residents by choice, so the bustling neighborhood locale feels cosmically aligned. Plus, as he says, it reminds him of his UK origins, South London in particular.
After an unfortunate mishap with some takeout that ends up splattered on the pavement, Hynes ditches his PR team, and the two of us saunter down Sullivan Street. As an interviewee, Hynes is unpretentiously folksy and laid-back, so much so that it’s easy to overlook just how monumental his impact on pop has been over the years. From his mid-2000s stint making cosmo-fusion rave punk with Test Icicles, to his galvanizing solo emergence as neo-pastoral waif Lightspeed Champion, to the way his alt-pop-productions-for-hire helped give startling dimension and depth to starlets like Solange and Sky Ferreira, Hynes’ rapid ascent as an in-demand, self-contained producer/performer/songwriter has helped redefine the concept of the black musical übermensch after stalwarts like Isaac Hayes, Prince, Babyface, and R. Kelly. Released under his Blood Orange alias, 2011’s Coastal Grooves and 2013’s Cupid Deluxe were fascinating showcases for Hynes’ nostalgic, deeply earnest yearning for the black queer artistic and intellectual life of the 1980s and early ’90s, a theme that continues on his latest album, Freetown Sound.
“With Cupid Deluxe, I was trying to make something that was like a mixtape that is given to someone,” he explains. “This one is more like a personal mixtape that you would make for yourself—a messy, in-your-own-world, headphones vibe.”
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发表于 2020-1-10 14:22:39
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