Frank Ocean has more than delivered on his promise for new music. Shifting between falsetto and Auto-Tuned vocals, Ocean rap-sings about lust and loneliness, after name-checking the late A$AP Yams, Pimp C and Trayvon Martin (“That [n-word] look just like me”).
Advertisement
After fits and starts, rumors and innuendo, Frank Ocean finally released his sophomore album on Saturday night.
According to Rolling Stone, there are numerous pop-up shops are set to open in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and London, which will have a print publication, titled Boys Don’t Cry that goes along with the album.
The mysterious musician has kept fans waiting for a follow-up to his Grammy-winning 2012 debut album Channel Orange/ He then surprised fans with the sudden release on “Blonde” on the weekend.
Four years. Rampant speculation. “I got two versions, I got two versions, I got two versions” says the deep voice as the track eases in, reinforcing his original promise on the new album from a year ago.
Earlier this month (Aug16) he hit headlines after posting a cryptic live video stream on his website, showing an Apple Music-sponsored black and white video feed of a warehouse.
The video ends with self-immolating Ocean – or at least someone wearing the same Jenny Holzer shirt as Ocean – being extinguished.
Advertisement
“Thank you all. Especially those of you who never let me forget I had to finish”, he added, addressing dogged fans. But “Nikes” is the sort of deft, challenging, and instinctively breathtaking track that kept people clinging onto Ocean in the first place. “Which is basically every one of y’all”, Ocean wrote on his official Tumblr blog.
