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“Negro Swan is the fourth studio album by Blood Orange, an alias of British musician Dev Hynes. It was released on 24 August 2018, through Domino. The album was preceded by the singles "Charcoal Baby" and "Jewelry". On 19 July 2018, Hynes shared a teaser video of the album featuring a snippet of new music, before announcing the album and making it available for pre-order later the same day. The cover art features an image of Kai the Black Angel sitting on a car's front window with a white do-rag on his head and wings clipped to his back…

…In a press release, Hynes described the album as "an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color. A reach back into childhood and modern traumas, and the things we do to get through it all. The underlying thread through each piece on the album is the idea of hope, and the lights we can try to turn on within ourselves with a hopefully positive outcome of helping others out of their darkness." The press release also stated that the album was entirely written and produced by Hynes." – Wiki

“On his fourth studio album as Blood Orange, musical polymath Devonté Hynes explores the comforts and complications of living a life as both/and—of being treated, to borrow from Thelonious Monk, as an ugly beauty. Negro Swan captures the scattershot, jittery, anxious, blissed-out-depressive feeling of what it’s like to be a marginalized person at a toxic and retrograde moment in global culture and politics. “No one wants to be the Negro Swan,” he laments on “Charcoal Baby.” “No one wants to be the odd one out at times…/Can you break sometimes?” Hynes goes for the anachronistic “Negro” to suggest the history of racial abjection—just like the phrase “Charcoal Baby” evokes 19th-century blackface performers who used burnt cork, or charcoal, to darken their faces for white audiences. The album’s cover photo, shot by the designer-photographer Ana Kraš, drives home the ugly beauty idea: A black man perches on a car windowpane, rocking a white, studded do-rag, eyeshadow, and wings on his back.” – Pitchfork

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