Negro Swan – Blood Orange

You might not realise it, but you have heard Blood Orange. Either, like myself, you discovered him on a random Danny Brown track six years ago and placed him in camp ‘generic hip-hop chorus fodder’ along with Musiq Soulchild and Bilal. Or you’ve heard one of his similar contemporaries. Just for fun, I’ll list some artists, and you can listen for them like hidden features; Tame Impala, any 2010s rap song Anderson .Paak featured on, ‘Graduation’ era Kanye, The Weeknd, Late 90s A Tribe Called Quest/ The Ummah production, Lianne Las Havas, ‘The Love Below’ era André 3000 and, by extension, Prince. For better or worse, Blood Orange is a stylistic chameleon. Musical versatility is a fine balance, often bowing under the weight of shameless pastiche for the sake of catchment. Many hip-hop acts have resorted to throwing shit at the wall since the start of the new millennium, but Blood Orange is the Michael Van Gerwin of shit throwing, with an exciting and complimentary variety making for a quick checkout. Perhaps it borders on imitation, but music is not chronological anymore. It all exists at once and we’re no longer forced to partake in the zeitgeist. I can’t remember the last time I chose to Guantanamo Bay my brain with the radio so it’s a non-issue for me. I’ll leave the Kleenex out for the historians.

One of the great joys of preparing this blog is the moment where the levee holding back the rushes of inspiration breaks. I was trying to draw some osmotic meaning from the Oxonian crenelations or from the aromas of spice and coffee on the Cowley Road, but this listen requires a planted arse. I hate sitting still and listening to music given a chronic addiction to productivity. It puts atlas stones in my eyelids. But in mashing two pieces of culture together for a Doodle God moment of creation, I only found a forced pseudo-significance. The watershed for ‘Negro Swan’ was actually on Chiltern rail from Oxford to Marylebone. Right as the train pulled out, ‘Orlando’ pitched in with its melancholy funk. I’ve been thrown into the working world recently and spend a lot of my free time in twilight. Night listening is a cliché, but this album requires the solitude and hypnotic transfiguring of small hour shadows. The dark trees melted across the pane like the ‘Carlito’s Way’ credits (or maybe a non-descript Bond film, I forget). I paid no mind to the track listing and the songs morphed into one another. Between Blood Orange’s chameleonic turns and the J Dilla sirens, the album possesses the looseness of a mixtape despite being thematically tighter than a Croydon facelift. The features follow suit. Rocky was in his ‘Testing’ phase on ‘Chewing Gum’, but the lazy freestyle quality of the verse that made ‘Testing’ land with all the passion of a flaccid member fits seamlessly into the fluidity of the song structures. To avoid damming the albums flow, I recommend a full length listening for the uninitiated. 

I’ve moved into a new cell. I hesitate to say room because that implies space. It has forced me to be minimal and ruthlessly throw away everything I don’t need. It has been a Buddhist few weeks between the pedal bins, Vinted and Oxfam. Ironically, I got rid of some Buddhist canon that I was forced to haggle off a monk after confusing him for someone I’d drunkenly forgotten at a house party. But I think he’d be proud of me. And I think this album is resonating with me because in some regards it is a Buddhist allegory. ‘Holy Will’ is almost A Capella making the eventual drum outro resound like a depth charge from some indescribable abyss within. Even with a garnish of brass, tracks like ‘Jewellery’ feel sparse and bare, but never vapid. Any indulgence on this album is earned, such as the distorted guitar solos on ‘Minetta Creek’ and ‘Nappy Wonder’.  Each track is like a moment of clarity live from the isolation chamber. Perhaps that’s why it makes direct contact with my current lonerism and housing predicament. Out of work hours I exist in a facsimile of that very chamber. Just looking out my window as I write this, sitting in the rain scored reveries of a streetlamp, the album undertone has come to me. Alone, not lonely. There’s no better phrase in the recesses of my ignorant mind that can capture this album. 

A negro swan, different but no less singular, elegant and beautiful. This is an album built on the foregoing of performance and the finding of self-worth in the dissimilar. The lyrics are driven by self-confidence despite being objectively sombre. Blood Orange presents sobering realisations such as “first kiss was the floor” and “feelings never have been ethical” with a shrugged frankness (and odd catchiness). The coldness that birthed this album generates inner warmth, sewn with an air of acceptance. Musically mirrored, ‘Charcoal Baby’ possesses soul wearied horns that pine with consolatory candidness. Those meanderings continue throughout the track listing on ‘Saint’ and ‘Take Your Time’ to name a few, bittersweet in their intimacy and humanity. Obviously, this journey of acceptance is rooted in issues of race and sexuality which I won’t condescendingly explain. Attach your own experiences to it. My lasting memory of Blood Orange is the creeping sensation of appreciation, sitting in a heated Hyundai going up the Autobahn whilst night settled lazily into the horizon. ‘Holy Will’ slipped into the 808 outro and the echoes of “Be true” rang out as the meter slid past 100 and the intro to ‘Lost Highway’ ran in my mind’s eye. But maybe I like to remember things a certain way.