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Blood Orange brings his thoughtful—and thought-provoking music—to Life Is Beautiful

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Blood Orange performs Saturday at 7:35 p.m. on the Barcardi Stage.
Photo: House Tribeca / Courtesy

BLOOD ORANGE Saturday, 7:35 p.m., Bacardi Stage.

On Dev Hynes’ latest album, Negro Swan, the musician, singer and producer best known as Blood Orange sharpens his swelling rhythm and blues arrangements and heart-wrenching lyrics. “First kiss was the floor,” Hynes sings on opener “Orlando,” a track addressing the physical harassment and abuse he endured from his classmates growing up as a queer black kid in East London, and he revisits the topic later in the record. Blood Orange fills Negro Swan with insightful monologues, narrated mostly by trans writer and activist Janet Mock, with additional words by Puff Daddy and others. We caught up with Hynes ahead of his Life Is Beautiful performance to talk about his process, overcoming judgment and more.

You’ve said that Negro Swan explores black depression, but that it’s also a message of hope. Does writing and releasing music help you process these kinds of things? There’s never solutions or answers in anything I’m doing; it’s more just me thinking, and it kind of comes out. I don’t shy away from my thoughts, so from that it inherently becomes heavy subject matter. … I’m very much just like, take me or leave me. No one is forced to listen to me—at least I hope they’re not (laughs).

Have you always been that way? I think it’s a back and forth. I’m 32, and in the last few years I’ve been more like that—I just do what I want. That sounds … it gives off an attitude of being unkind, and it’s not that. It’s more just like, life is short, so I will just do things that will make me happy.

On Negro Swan, Janet Mock speaks about the importance of being vulnerable and able to show up as you are without judgment or fear. How does that resonate with you, and what you were feeling when you wrote the album? Everything I do musically is me doing it without judgment, or at least trying to. If I were to let the voices in my head win, I would never release anything, ever. There’s times, especially in the past couple years, where I really deeply thought about that—not releasing anything. But then you kind of get over it. You get over yourself, and none of it is that serious. It’s just music.

How does your new album translate to the stage? It has to be kind of changed. I’ve actually got a music director to help—a friend of mine, Mikey Hart—and it’s really cool. I’m going to try to put across all the different factors and see if I can get it to translate.

What would you like people to take from this album? Anything they want. If someone took away a way of EQing the snare drum, that’s as amazing to me as someone taking away something lyrically. I don’t ever want to put sanctions—everyone’s free to take what they want, and if they get anything [out of it] that’s really cool, because this is just sh*t I made to ease myself. The idea of someone taking something from it is out of this world.

Life is Beautiful September 21-23, gates open at 2 p.m., $135/day (Friday & Saturday sold out), $655 3-day VIP (3-day GA sold out).Downtown Las Vegas, lifeisbeautiful.com.

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