From Blood Orange to Britney, Dev Hynes is so in demand it’s ridiculous.
He still has time for trying to cover entire Marshall Mathers albums in his childhood bedroom, though.
It’s been a funny couple of years for lil’ Dev Hynes. When he set off for New York in 2009, he still looked like a slightly dweeby kids TV presenter. He sported fluffy ushankas and Urban Outfitters flannel shirts and played geeky acoustic music under the name Lightspeed Champion.
By the time he came back he’d transformed into a sexy, perfectly-styled super producer that counts Beyoncé and Sky Ferreira as his mates. He’d become an immaculate dancer, a style symbol — even sexy. What happened to him on the other side of the pond? Well, he’d been writing with Solange Knowles, working together to redefine black R&B for the 21st century. Hynes and Knowles have never tried to better the golden era of 90s R&B — that joyous and unrepeatable period of squeaking, booming perfection gifted to us by Boyz II Men, Destiny’s Child, Missy Elliott and Timbaland.
Instead, they find interesting ways round it. Hynes’ co-writes with Solange are at a glacial BPM and full of weird overlapping loops that only make sense by the end of the song. His debut Blood Orange album was esoteric pop — R&B frameworks filled up with weird sprinklings of bits of old record collections. Even as the call came to work with huge stars like Britney, he didn’t start to conform — still moonwalking round pop’s back alleys.
His new record under his Blood Orange alias, Cupid Deluxe, continues to dig away with elements of funk, soul, jazz and chillwave production. The result, like Frank Ocean’s stunning Channel ORANGE, is a record that pushes beyond the old framework. It feels like the pinnacle of everything Hynes has been working towards and, most impressive, despite the range of artists on the record — everyone from Skepta to Chairlift — and the mishmash of genres present, he’s now reached a point where his production is immediately recognisable, where people say, “this must be Dev.”
I met him in the top floor of an old-fashioned central London hotel. It’s one of those city secrets — some of the most spectacular views in the capital and open to anyone, but always empty. On the stereo are smooth lounge versions of pop hits from 10 years ago like Leave Right Now and My Heart Will Go On. Tea comes with complimentary shortbread, and the waiters look like dowdy VHS copies of themselves in acrylic maroon waistcoats. We both agree it’s marvellous.
It’s great that you’ve got a new solo record out. Is it hard to do work for yourself when you’ve got so many other requests?
Ha! Yeah, I’m so bad at that. At the moment there’s definitely things I need to do for the release of this album, which is very soon. I have to make a video for the stream of the album tomorrow, there’s other bits of promo and artwork that need to be finished. But last night me and my girlfriend literally spent three hours attempting to cover The Marshall Mathers LP 2 at my parents’ house, in my old childhood bedroom in Essex. It’s just like — what am I doing? I do not have time to try and learn new Eminem raps right now, let alone recreate the production and mix them down. Yeah, so that’s what my brain’s like.
Did you finish a whole Eminem song?
Yeah, we did like three songs.
How can you keep up with the flow, especially on “Rap God”?
I know all the words. I could do the whole song, 100%. We got really stuck on the final verse of Bad Guy, but Rap God and Berzerk were nothing.
Who gets the crucial first verse in your relationship — you or Samantha [Urbani from Friends]?
We’ve got a style, where it’s two lines each, back and forth.
There should be a deluxe edition of your album with the entire Eminem album covered by you tacked on. Or, even better, a deluxe edition of his album with his versions of your songs tacked on.
It’s funny because I posted something on Facebook about Eminem yesterday and my girlfriend posted a comment saying, “I really respect how your album is out in less than a week and 80% of your social media is about Eminem.”
Your album is really great. It’s about 150% better than I was expecting.
Oh, thanks. Yeah, it has some force on there. I feel like it’s a funny record.
How long have you been working on it?
It’s probably simultaneously the longest and shortest I’ve ever worked on anything. The oldest song on the album is Chosen, and that started over three years ago and was just gradually being tweaked and worked on. But once things started making sense with what I thought the album would become, it was sorted out in like a week. Some songs I wrote and recorded in like two hours.
To me it seems like you’ve been working on it with everything you’ve been doing up to now...
It was like that actually. Things like It Is What It Is — I’d had that weird xylophone pattern for half a year, and it was half odd orchestrations I was working on, and I didn’t really know what was going on with it. And then one night I was just bored and played around and it just came. They were super quick songs too. Always Let U Down was done in my girlfriend’s kitchen while she had people round for dinner. I was sitting there just with headphones on playing with this beat.
There is a real mix of styles and even techniques on there, it feels more like a project.
Yeah totally, it’s cool that comes across! It was definitely a project. I was trying to make a type of thing, see if I could do that. It’s kinda all I’m ever trying to do — I’m just trying to make my own version of something so I can listen to it. I don’t know what that mentality is.
So let me ask you about the most exciting bit of Dev Hynes news — you were working with William Orbit.
Oh my God. He’s actually incredible.
And were you working with him on the Britney album?
Yeah it was the Britney album, just kinda jamming. He jams and dives into the computer and makes songs. We mostly just spoke about Game of Thrones.
Is he a fan?
Massive fan. I missed the last four or five weeks and he gave me a hard drive with them on.
So are any of the tracks you worked on going to be on the new record?
Definitely not.
There’s no way?
Noooo way!
You submitted some though right?
Yeah, submitted a bunch, but they didn’t want any of that. I sent them a song that was even faster than Losing You, and they were like, “She’s not taking any more ballads.” I’m just not in that world. Whatever.
I’m kind of obsessed with “Work Bitch.” I love her terrible British accent.
It’s fucked. It’s some kind of end of the world thing — it’s Britney in a desert and all music is dead and it’s just her going “Mazaarrrrati.” It is crazy.
How has Will.I.Am got himself into a position where he can executive produce a Britney Spears album?
He hasn’t done anything good since Boom Boom Pow.
Yeah that was amazing. That whole album The E.N.D. was good. Oh my God, though, has he put out some shit in the last few years. Jesus Christ.
What do you think about the state of pop in all its forms at the moment?
I think it could be a great time. I feel like there’s a weird opening where people are more willing to take experimentation from pop artists. And I feel like this is one of those time periods. The wave of EDM and stuff is slowly dying. We’re more willing to take risks now. But there’s still people that want to play it safe and just get a hip-hop producer to give you a beat he was gonna give to 2 Chainz.
So you think there’s forward-thinking stuff happening in pop, but maybe only at sub-superstar level?
It’s so funny — I think the more stuff gets released through the year, the more I appreciate Yeezus. No one is actually taking chances like that. That record is what it’s about. Whether it’s someone popular or completely unknown, just someone having a clear vision and knowing what they want just makes something great.
Do you have other producers that you see as peers, like a new school?
Adam from Kindness. It helps that we’ve known each other for so long — he’s someone I view as a safe pair of hands and I think all his ideas are spot on. There are a lot of people I’m fans of that I think are like new-ish, Sampha and stuff. But I view those people as way above me in terms of ability.
What do you miss about the golden era of London’s indie scene?
Trash. I miss Trash. There’s a song on the album, Uncle Ace, which is essentially me making a song that would be played in Trash. Sure, I was trying to reference New York and disco and stuff, but that stuff as it was seen through a massive night out on New Oxford Street.