Blood Orange shares new track ‘Do You See My Skin Through The Flames?’

Dev Hynes has released a new track under his Blood Orange moniker. A stark, harrowing spoken-word piece, ‘Do You See My Skin Through The Flames?’ focuses on racial tensions across the world, and recent devastating events in Charleston. The track is not taken from his forthcoming record, and is a one-off release.

In the piece, Dev Hynes reflects on the meaning behind his surname, samples a conversation with a young black man who was aggressively stop-searched by the police in Paris, and says elsewhere; “that’s why you laugh at Kanye when he’s talking in a chair, but the same conversation but replaced is good enough.”It’s a focused, and somber listen.

Writing on his Facebook page, Hynes says: “You may see me write on this page or playing music and see me as Blood Orange or Dev Hynes, but I turn the corner and I am just another black man, a black man that can’t get a cab, a black man that has to be careful how i walk if i want to overtake a young white woman so that she doesn’t feel scared, a black man that has to sit down and be silent when a police car circles the basketball court I play at, a black man that could be shot down at any time in my life, and as I’m dying know full well, that even if they were to catch who killed me, he will get off free. It is an incredible sadness & heaviness. Being told that we do not matter on and on and on day to day to day. America likes to act like a super human yet continues to blame human error for these horrific acts. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Listen to ‘Do You See My Skin Through The Flames’ below.