The Dev Hynes Post

Devonte Hynes

It's finally time to talk about Dev Hynes. If you know me you know he's my favorite artist of all-time. The release of this article means he just announced his new Blood Orange tour. Aside from his classical performances, this will be the first Blood Orange tour since 2020. At the time I was in college in at Texas Tech, but I bought a ticket to see him at Radio City Music Hall. Then covid hit and everything shutdown. After his sonically compelling Four Song-EP and a recent single titled "The Field", my hopes are high for a new Blood Orange album in the year of our lord 2025. I'm genuinely excited about this tour, and felt like this was the perfect time to talk about Dev. I just want to briefly touch on what this blog will not discuss. There won't be a narrative of "Oh my God Blood Orange saved my life!", nor will I engage with the timeline of Dev's discography from Test Icecles to Light Speed Champion, to Blood Orange. No shade to those approaches, I just feel like they're entirely too common, so I'm just not eager to apply them to my article about Dev. I'm more interested in discussing how his music has subtly influenced the expansion of my taste, and opened doors to new genres I would've overlooked otherwise. That unintended lesson feels like something any music lover could apply to their favorite artist.

I'll try to be brief, but my introduction to Dev Hynes plays a key role in the context of this topic. Now, I could lie and say I've been listening to Dev since 2008, but in reality I was in 6th grade bumping Will.i.am and whatever else the radio was playing at nauseam. I first came across Dev in 2016 when he dropped his third studio album Freetown Sound. I can again take this opportunity to lie and claim his music stuck with me immediately, but in all honestly only the tracks "Desiree" and "Augustine" stuck at the time. 2016 was a historic year for music. At the time, my ears were biased toward Hip-Hop, and while I was listening to all the phenomenal albums from artists I'd already known, along came Blood Orange... I didn't know him from a boulder so I deleted Freetown Sound and kept it pushing. Cut to early 2018 and I see a post by A$AP Rocky with some guys, and I notice one of them have their dreads tied in a way I'd never seen. I looked at the tag and saw it said "Dev Hynes" I'm like "Who the fuck is Dev Hynes?" I clicked on his page and saw that his bio read Blood Orange. I immediatly realized it was the guy whose album I deleted two years prior. He'd JUST dropped a single called "Charcoal Baby" so I checked it out.

I listened to the song and lost my shit. Oh god! The drums, the synths, the vocals, the keys! It was amazing! Over the next few months I went back and listened to his entire discography and loved every project. In August of 2018 he dropped Negro Swan and it was a fucking wrap! Every artist took a back seat to Dev Hynes. That explanation wasn't as breif as I'd hoped, but now that the roots are clear, I want to explore the branches that grew out of my admiration for Dev's music.

Trust is an interesting thing in any art form. When you have a favorite artist, you tend to trust their vision for a reason. Whether it's rooted in their consistency, quality, range, or wherever your values lie. It doesn't matter what field they choose to create in next, so long as it resonates with you. I could focus on the array of musicians Dev has produced for outside of his genre, like Paul McCartney, Mac Miller (Rest In Peace), and Carly Rae Jepson. But I really want to talk about his transition into classical music and producing scores for movies and television.

To this day, he’s scored five films and two TV shows, composed numerous orchestral pieces, and performed around the world. Though his first score was for the movie Palo Alto (2014), he really leaned into the classical bag in the late 2010s early 2020s. The score that got me was the one he conducted for Queen & Slim in 2019. When I heard the score I cried and unironically played it in my car for months. Tracks like "A Couple Deer" and "Slim's Horse" were vibrant and immersive. It turned any drive around Houston into a chamber of reflection (no pun intended). Naturally, as he produced more scores, I, you know... listened to them, and it really opened my eyes to an entirely different world of music than I was used to. He has a rendition of "Evil N*****"by Julius Eastman that introduced me to the composer and pushed me to explore more classical music. Composers like Bach and Vivaldi were featured in my rotation for the first time ever because of Dev. The exposure to classical music eventually led me to French accordion music. I began listening to accordionists like Gus Viseur, Tony Murena, and Émile Vacher — musicians who played in Paris in the ’30s and ’40s. Soon after, my fixation with French accordion music led me to French pop legends like Serge Gainsbourg, Charles Aznavour, and Christophe. Since then I've dug deeper into the French pop genre.

It's wild how listening to a few scores by Dev Hynes carried me down so many pathways. I'm happy I took the initiative to check out Dev's music beyond Blood Orange, there's no way I'd be listening to some of the genres I listen to today if I hadn't. The best artists are the ones who expand your willingness to learn. If you have a favorite artist I implore you to check out the other art forms they dabble in, you never know what roads it could lead you down.

We don't have to be parasocial in our approach to appreciating an artist. Trust is a relative term in reference to someone's artistry. The action of trusting someone's taste can come from a friend who has an eye for fashion, or great taste in restaurants. The friend in question has obviously shown a level of consistency that's placed them in a position of relative authority within that field that you may lack for the moment. The same process applies to people we don't personally know but whose art we've admired over time. I've been a huge fan of music my whole life, but it was difficult to stick to genres outside of what I was used to. Hip-Hop was the only genre I knew inside and out for a time. Getting into Blood Orange was definetly a step in the right direction, but as Dev explored other genres it changed what was plaitable to me. Inspiration is everything—even the artists we admire were shaped by peers and predecessors who influenced their work. I highly suggest looking into this artist's inspirations or collaborators. Exploring who they admire or work with has shaped some of the artists I listen to today.

Yves Tumor

Can we get a moment of silence out of respect for Yves Tumor? Ok wait like 10 seconds before you continue to read. The first time I heard Yves was on the "Smoke Remix" by Blood Orange, which dropped in 2018. Now that I think about it, Yves might actually be the first artist Dev put me onto. I went back to Yves' album Safe in the Hands of Love that'd just dropped two months prior to the "Smoke Remix". I was terrified yet intrigued by the album. It was truly like something I'd never heard, I couldn't understand why I liked it so much. The growing sounds of distortion and the sonic decay of the album as it rots and rages into madness with every song had me hooked. I would blare that album in my car like it was nobody's business. To this day, Yves Tumor is one of my favorite artists; they played a pivotal role in normalizing "harsher" sounds in the music I'd later consume.

Another collaborator of Dev's is the band Turnstile. Before their most recent album Never Enough (2025) my introduction to the band was in 2021 when their album Glow On released. Back then Dev posted that he'd performed some vocals for them so I gave the album a listen. No surprise here, I loved the album. The mix of hardcore and with spacey synths fucking sent me. Needless to say Glow On was one of my most listened to albums of 2021. Dev also has vocal and production credits on Never Enough so y'all should definitely check out that album as well. At this point I'd listened to a lot of different artists, but yet again my intro to Turnstile encouraged me tour thru the hardcore and punk scene. Reigniting what might've been my third punk/hardcore renaissance. Leading me to bands like Fiddlehead, Trapped Under Ice, and Type-O Negative to name a few. I want to remind everyone again that all of this starts with Dev Hynes and his involvment with Turnstile. Curiosity can be a tool for knowledge. Plenty of people plant a flag with their top 3–5 favorite artists, when they could easily dig a little deeper—exploring their collaborators, or better yet, the artists who inspired them.

One day, I was watching an interview with Dev Hynes when he was asked a simple question: "Who did you listen to growing up?" He had a laundry list of names, but the band Blur stuck out the most. I'd vaguely heard of the band in passing but never took the time to listen to their stuff. After Dev cosigned them, I didn’t hesitate to listen—the first album I listened to was Parklife (1994). If you haven't guessed by now, I of course went through their entire discography. My new found love for Blur unleashed a full Brit Pop surge. I listened to at least 24 bands that year. The Charlatans, Gene, Echo Belly, and Sleeper were in heavy rotation all of 2023. I'm starting to feel like a broken record, but this was the fourth or fifth time Dev's affiliation/cosign of a band encouraged me to embrace the depths of a genre. It all started with classical music in 2019, but by the time I looked up I realized I'd learned so much music just a few years later. Even the music I find that I can't give Dev direct credit for, I find myself giving him partial credit. He was the impetus behind the range of sounds and styles I've absorbed over the years. The trust I had in his taste has completely changed the landscape of my music consumption.

Everyone who likes music has a favorite artist. I'm telling you, if you believe in their vision, you should listen to their influences and collaborators. It’s not about wanting to hear a different version of your favorite artist; it’s about opening yourself up to a whole new world of music. Thanks for reading this week's blog! Y’all should definitely check out the new Blood Orange album if drops this year. I might write an album review on it. I also just bought my ticket to his concert in New York — now that I live out here it'll be way easier to attend. I'd definitely love the opportunity to interview him one day. Anyway, take my advice — these artists aren't your friends, but they can put you on to some amazing music!