Hear Blood Orange’s Two New Songs Honoring Black History Month

Dev Hynes released two new songs under his Blood Orange moniker. “Christopher & 6th” and “June 12th” are the musician’s first new solo songs since he released Freetown Sound in 2016.

“Christopher & 6th” — presumably a nod to the Manhattan corner not too far off from where the Stonewall riots occurred — is the more lo-fi of the two tracks, as he focuses on mostly delivering the song through his tender upper register.

On “June 12th,” Hynes mostly talks above the beat, waxing poetic on the importance of loving yourself and the struggles of fitting in. Hynes did not specify what he was referencing with the date “June 12th,” but in the United States it is recognized as Loving Day, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the remaining anti-miscegenation laws in the country due to the case of Loving v. Virginia.

Hynes notified fans of his new music with an Instagram post. Though he has been teasing a new album for the last few months, he specifies that these tracks are not from that forthcoming LP. He ended the post by instructing his followers with a quote from “June 12th”: “U must luv yourself” and gave a shout out to Black History Month.

During a conversation at the New Yorker Festival in October, Hynes revealed that he was “78% done” with the follow-up to Freetown Sound (via Pitchfork). Last year, he produced the song Haim song “You Never Knew” as well as the Blondie song “Long Time”