“And if Blonde mostly gives the mainstream a middle finger, the Apple Music-only “visual album” Endless totally abandons any claims to urban radio after opening with a cover of the Isley Brothers’ “(At Your Best) You Are Love”. Luckily, figuring out how to actually buy Frank Ocean’s new album, which is a relief given how long fans have waited.
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The R&B artist has been keeping his fans in a state of suspense about a follow-up to the critically adored Channel Orange for over a year – with various false release dates throughout.
“I had the time of my life making all of this”, Ocean wrote. “Which is basically every one of y’all”, Ocean said on his official Tumblr page. While Def Jam stalled in helping Ocean with his debut album, the singer independently released a mixtape, “Nostalgia, Ultra”, out of protest in 2011.
Ocean’s “Orange” was nominated for the best album of the year Grammy Award and the work was hailed as one of the best albums of the year by multiple critics. Moments later, Apple Music released Endless, a 45-minute video of Ocean building a staircase. Why are they even in the business at all if the music, and more specifically, getting the music to the people, isn’t the priority? Each song explores the emotions that Ocean has bottled up since he was a boy, showing that perhaps boys don’t cry, but men do. That’s the name of the publication, but there are still some discrepancies with names. Within that (alongside a poem by Kanye West about McDonald’s food), was the much-heralded second version of the album, “Blond”, containing a slightly different tracklist. He also also believes the music industry is now facing a conspiracy “to get everybody to pay for a subscription by putting hit content behind a paywall”. He also released a music video Saturday morning for his song “Nikes”, which appears as the first track on Blonde.
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The list of contributors on Ocean’s sophomore project, as reported by Billboard’s Steven Horowitz, is varied and includes musical heavyweights such as Beyonce, David Bowie, Rick Rubin and Kendrick Lamar.
