For a track-by-track interview with Pitchfork, Dev Hynes talked about the song’s connection to its music video:

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?

Dev Hynes: 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.

Dev Hynes