Devonte Hynes is the genius behind Blood Orange. This dude looks like he rolled right out of the early 90's with his shitty mock neck shirts, shitty hats and shitty high waisted pleated pants, and crrrrrazy slithery slippery dance moves! Anyway, he plays the keyboards, guitar, bass and drums on Cupid Deluxe. Of course. Cause he's so great. And he has tons of awesome guests singing with him too! The lady singer from Chairlift, Caroline Polachek and his girlfriend Samantha Urbani sing on tons of songs. The dude from Kindness, Clams Casino, bro from Dirty Projectors, a British rapper named Skepta, and another awesome rapper, Despot. I also feel extremely overwhelmed trying to tackle writing about this album, cause its so good and weird and there's so much going on with it, so I figured I'd just do a lil bit on each song.
"Chamakay" starts off the album with Caroline Polachek singing with Hayes. It's one of the more serious songs on the album and it has an incredible video that you should watch (below). Devonte visits Georgetown, Guyana for the first time, which is where his mom is from, and you get to see the first time he meets his grandpa!
"You're Not Good Enough" has the most awesome and hilarious bass guitar I've heard since Seinfeld--it's hard to not air-bass along with this one. Its the albums' first intro to Samantha Urbani and Devonte Hayes singing together, which is pure magic, just like their super cool and stylin relationship is. Devonte and Urbani (I know I should use his last name, but with a name like Devonte....) have such a romantic way of singing together, even if the lyrics aren't warm and fuzzy. I have a hard time listening to lyrics, and it took me a minute to realize that this song is actually pretty cold: "I never was in love/you know that you were never good enough"...You'd never know it if you were just listening to the way they sing together though.
Uncle ACE was the first song that I would specifically put on and it has been my main shower song for weeks. Its definitely the disco jam of the album. With guitar so funky, saxophone so sassy, singing so cheesy, and bass so slappy, this song is just insanely good. At 2:50 the keys come in and the song changes a bit. Then, these horns come in, and you just try and tell me you can sit still during this ending bit. Or at the very least try and tell me that your neck and shoulder area doesn't do something special. Cause it does.
The female vocals on Cupid Deluxe, done by his girlfriend Samantha Urbani of the band Friends, are so important to the album. When she comes in on "No Right Thing" with Dirty Projectors dude, it just makes the song a little bit funny in the best way possible. I remember us "Loling" at that part the first time hearing it. This whole album, for me anyway, is super humorous but in an incredibly well done way. Slap bass everywhere, 80's sounding guitar bits, cheesy vocals. The 90's beat in most of these songs (Especially 'Time Will Tell') makes me think of those movies, y'know, where the white teacher is transferred to an inner-city school, with no student respecting them until eventually the teacher cracks the code on how to reach the hearts of the hard ass kids that don't give a fuck.
Urbani's vocals in "It Is What It Is" are some of my favorite of hers. In the middle of the song, it all slows down and the steel drums take a little break. There's some Twin Shadow-esque guitar playing and looping and then at 4:02 when the beat comes back in, it's just... Ugh. Bah. No words. Just shoulder dancing and saucy looks at a cute boy or something.
"Chosen," is one of the prettiest songs on the album. Sax heavy, sassy beat, funny little speaking bit at the beginning with an adorable French accent.. This song is so romantic to me, even though there's only two or three lines of actual lyrics. Must be that sax. My favorite part is when he repeats "Baby let me take you home." OKAY.
"Clipped On" should be playing while two break dancers battle it out on a big ol piece of cardboard. The beat and Despots rapping are so old school and amazing. When trying to make people love Blood Orange as much as I do this is the song that I play first. It's so lovable!
The beginning to "Always Let U Down" doesn't do it for me. For some reason when the initial female vocals start out with "I can only disappoint you, cause I always let you down" it makes me feel like the songs gonna suck, but den dat beat comes in, the shoulders get going and Samantha Urbani's voice just is all beautiful and soulful and awesome and the song rules again! Weird!
"On The Line" is probably my favorite song on this album. But that's like picking a favorite out of Devonte Hynes' dance moves: I'm sure it will change in a few days. Devontes singing on this song is so great, and there's a little Solange bit at the end, from her song "Some Things Never Seem To Fucking Work" that Hynes co-wrote, where they just repeat "So baby is that all you got, Baby are we on the line" over beautiful keys, and it's magical. Look at them up there. Jesus fuck they're cute.
Skepta is the UK rapper on "High Street." Man, British rappers sound amazing. And who else can say "Put Your Pinot Grigio high, This one's for my G's on the Norff Side" and sound that cool? Now I wanna drink white wine all day.
Then comes the song ending it all, "Time Will Tell." Y'know, the one with the extra amount "He taught them a thing about calculus, they taught him a thing about the street" piano. This song also has one of my favorite lyrics on the album, "Come into my bedroom, come into my bedroom." If you want to see a great example of Devonte Hynes' weird ass awesome dance moves, watch the video below. It's great.
This album came out in November 2013 but I didn't give it a proper go until January, so this is absolutely gonna be the album that carries me through all of the shitty -50 weather and into spring. And I'm excited for this album to have a whole different feeling to it when I'm sitting outside with a big ol glass of sangria and slutty shorts on!
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