He finally released that self-directed film on Thursday night, which features him building set pieces while 18 tracks (possibly from his album???) play in the background. Ocean’s video for “Nikes” earlier today already subverted gender roles in much of its surrealist imagery, and Blonde appears to have plenty more challenging hits up its sleeve.
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Ocean has a few collaborations on the album, including with R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and British artist James Blake.
The “Boys Don’t Cry” title was not discarded, however.
After three years of teasing, we were so ready for new music from Frank Ocean and he didn’t fail to bring it with this new release. According to Rolling Stone, that will follow “this weekend” but will no longer be called “Boys Don’t Cry”.
Fans had originally expected Ocean’s album to drop on August 5th, after he released a picture of a library card featuring a variety of dates, with August 5th standing out. If all goes accordingly, fans will hear Based God on Ocean’s long-awaited Boys Don’t Cry album.
Read Pitchfork’s interview with Wolfgang Tillmans, the composer whose track “Device Control” was used as the intro and outro for Ocean’s album Endless. We can now add Frank Ocean’s to the list of pop releases surrounded by misinformation and controlled by someone disinterested in getting with the program.
For now, you can stream snippets of Blonde (stylized Blond on the album art) if you don’t have Apple Music, or stream the full thing if you’re a subscriber.
Frank Ocean has dropped his second new album in as many days.
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The video itself is a departure from the stark black-and-white visuals that have accompanied everything Frank Ocean-related over the past couple weeks.
