The album's full effect is more abstract and nebulous than his debut, and far more rewarding.įrank Ocean in the music video for "Nikes."
The project's atmospheric, hypnotic centerpiece "Nights" is one of the single best songs released this decade. "Pink + White," featuring production from Pharrell and backing vocals from Beyoncé, evokes warmth and nostalgia in a way that only an Ocean song can. The three-song stretch of "White Ferrari," "Seigfried," and "Godspeed" is an entire world unto itself, where it's always overcast and the air is extra oxygenated, I imagine.
Ocean is the only songwriter credited on gorgeous tracks like "Nikes," "Self Control," "Good Guy," and "Pretty Sweet," which is an anomaly in music's increasingly collaborative landscape. "Blonde" is a fully realized vision with stratospheric high points and virtually zero low points. On top of completing what he called a "seven-year chess game" to control his own music - which included repaying a hefty advance and buying back all his masters recordings - Ocean created his magnum opus. Instead of labeling his sexuality in any specific way, he illustrated a dynamic understanding of queer love and our expansive, unpredictable human experience. Much like his lyricism, Ocean's note was a mosaic of feelings and details about a formative experience, devoid of judgments or limitations. Then, days before "Channel Orange" was set to drop, he posted a profoundly moving thank-you note on Tumblr that revealed the album's main source of inspiration: his first love, who was a man. The lead single from his debut studio album, "Thinkin Bout You," put him on mainstream radars in early 2012. Ocean shook the music industry by coming out as queer, just before the release of his studio debut "Channel Orange" - an instant classic. The next five years of Ocean's career have been so heavily and devotedly mythologized that most people know the story by heart.
Even while he publicly slammed the label for its lack of support, Def Jam met his demands for $1 million and complete creative control over his next project, "Channel Orange." Ocean staged a mini rebellion, bet everything on himself, and his star power exploded. Most importantly, it was met with enough acclaim to give him leverage with Def Jam. It drummed up enough critical acclaim to distinguish Ocean as more than a mysterious figure vaguely connected to Odd Future enough to inspire awe from Beyoncé, who enlisted him to write for her upcoming album, "4" (she also went on to collaborate with him for her self-titled masterpiece) enough to convince Kanye West and Jay-Z to fly him out to work on "Watch The Throne" (Ocean reportedly wrote the hook for "No Church in the Wild" in minutes and recorded his piece in one take). It was hardly the sensational drop that it would be today, but it became an underground hit.
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He released it online for free in early 2011. Ocean said it quickly became clear that his label had no intentions of providing the resources a new artist needs to create a studio debut, let alone find an audience for it.īut instead of shrinking or waiting or negotiating, Ocean quietly self-funded and recorded his debut mixtape "Nostalgia, Ultra" (so quietly, in fact, that his label didn't realize it had been made by the same Lonny Breaux they'd already signed). Frank Ocean in the music video for "Novacane," which Def Jam released as a single after it became a standout favorite from "Nostalgia, Ultra."
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