1. “Orlando”

Pitchfork: This eases listeners into the album in a very gentle way.

Dev Hynes: That one’s interesting because it’s the first and only time I tried an experiment that was like: What would Marvin Gaye do? He would have his words written and know a refrain or two, but everything else was a one-take, just creating melodies up. I wanted to try something like that, because it gives you this weird connection to the lyrics; I wanted to see the words and then just fly and see what could happen.

2. “Saint”

This track has a lot of different vocalists on it, what was it like putting them all together?

There are so many people on it mainly because I worked on it in different places—my old studio on St. Mark’s Place, another studio in Midtown, and then the studio I’m in now, in Chinatown. The first voices you hear on the song are BEA1991 and Aaron [Maine] of Porches, then it’s mine, then it’s Ava Raiin. Adam [Bainbridge] from Kindness is on it. All those folks recorded in completely different places. And the very first version of that song was started before Freetown Sound. It’s just been constantly worked and tweaked.

3. “Take Your Time”

This track has a very raw vocal take. What made you lean into a more unpolished sound?

That’s probably the song on the album I did vocals for the most. Oh my god, it could have been over 100 vocal takes over a two-year period. And every time it was one take. I have a thing about doing one-takes—in my own vocals, I never just drop in one note. I think that stems from the fact that, when I was starting out, I didn’t know how to drop notes in. I know how to do it now, but it’s just not natural for me. So if I get something wrong, I just redo the whole thing.

And this song was inspired by Robert Wyatt. There was an album of his that I had on cassette for so many years called Old Rottenhat, which has predominantly keyboard sounds. So I wanted something like that, with a simple melody but really nice. Also, Air is one of my favorite bands that people don’t realize is one of my favorite bands. [laughs] So it was like Robert Wyatt meets Talkie Walkie-era Air.

4. “Hope”

This song boils down the optimistic essence of the album in a lot of ways, particularly in a spoken word part by Puff Daddy: “You give me that hope that maybe one day I’ll get over my fears and I’ll receive.” How did you get him on the album?

While working on that song, I started doing fake Puff vocals, because I thought it sounded like that to me. And then I was like, “It’d be kind of cool if it actually was Puff.” So I sent him a text, like, “I did this track, do you want to do this vocal part?” And he replied, “Send it.” He sent back his vocals, like, 20 hours later. And he also sent an outro that he did on his own—I guess he just heard the rough version of it and felt like going in. It was actually way longer. I had to edit it, it was wild. I don’t know if I caught him on a good day with texting or whatever, but yeah, I feel pretty blessed for that one.

5. “Jewelry”

The video for this track encompasses a lot of the album’s themes in visual terms, as a representation of black joy. How did it come together?

For the last couple of years, I had this notebook that had “Negro Swan” emblazoned on it, and it had pictures, thoughts, artwork, and all the things that eventually went into the album. I felt like this song captured something within the album, which is weird, because it’s maybe the most disjointed song on the album, with all these different parts. So I wanted a video that was very, very simple.

I had an idea of having a very distinct visual moment for each part of the song with the lyrics [on-screen], so it grounds the song in a place. I had all these ideas, and I wanted Kai [the Black Angel] involved—he’s on the album cover and in the video and other videos that are gonna come out, too. He’s such a beautiful kid. There’s something special in his energy. I didn’t have an album cover before I did the video, and my label was going crazy because it was getting really, really late. But I just knew that everything that was happening in that video sums up the album, and there would be a picture that would happen. Luckily, I was right.