Frank Ocean - Blonde
The Scene
While watching some football the other day, the commentator made a joke about a dude who’d just scored his second goal of the game. He hadn’t scored in about a year before this match: “It’s just like London buses. You wait forever for one and then they all come at once”.
Not the most original joke, but it reminds me of Frank Ocean. Four years since Channel Orange tilted the world off its axis, it’s seemed as though the more rumours of a follow up there were, the more reclusive that Frank became. Like clockwork, a new insider leak emerged and a new deadline was missed. Over and over again until the very idea of a new Frank Ocean album became a running joke.
Then suddenly a looped video appears on his website… but that was just a false alarm. Until the full vid appeared a few weeks later in the form of a visual album entitled ‘Endless’. 48 hours later, his second official LP appeared. It’s called Blonde. Or Blond, depending where you read it. A magazine, Boys Don’t Cry, also saw limited release in four select popup stores in LA, NY, London and Chicago.
The wait is finally over.
Frank Ocean is back.
The Songs
- Nikes – A powerful return to the public arena, never has that chipmunk effect been more affecting. Slow and elegiac. Flawlessly confident with every turn. Nobody else writes songs like this.
- Ivy – More in focus, built around two guitar lines. One dull and clean, the other sparkling and reverbed. Deep down the feeling’s still good.
- Pink + White – A propulsive but shifting beat, keys and doubled-up vocals. Slight gospel tone to the chorus. One of the more fully produced tracks of the lot.
- Be Yourself – Heady advice from one who cares, like a torch to guide you through the dark.
- Solo – Both a tribute to and a condemning of single life. The organ haunts from start to finish, the hook pierces through with a sharpened beauty. The first song that stuck in the mind long after it was all over.
- Skyline To – Sex and drugs, smoke and haze. Summertime slipping away. The theremin was a lovely touch, as were Kendrick Lamar’s single word echoes.
- Self Control – A genuine but delicate ballad, built over some of that sexy pluck/chop guitar work (Austin Feinstein of Slow Hollows supplies it). “I’ll be the boyfriend in your wet dreams tonight.”
- Good Guys – Only 67 seconds long, a tale of a hook-up and the scars of a wrecked heart.
- Nights – New beginnings in the morning, old habits in the night. Split into two segments, the hook in the second is spectacular.
- Solo (Reprise) – Sit back and let Andre get to work with one of 2016s most powerful long verses.
- Pretty Sweet – Emerging from a sonically chaotic open, largely sung in melodic chants. There’s even a children’s chorus at the end.
- Facebook Story – A French accent sells modern romantic ennui better than any other.
- Close To You – Another quickie, sampling a little Bacharach via Stevie Wonder. “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t devastated. But you could have held my hand through this baby.” Why do birds… suddenly appear…
- White Ferrari – Amazing bit of song-writing here, weaving a casual tryst in a car with a bit of Paul McCartney and doing so all the while with this palpable sense of… I dunno. It’s too much to put in words.
- Seigfried – Picking up where WF left off, doubts of personal courage give way to strings and Elliott Smith and thoughts of dreams of glimmers of God.
- Godspeed – Godspeed and glory. Letting go of a love that was lost but doing so with nothing but the best in mind. The gospel leanings surge to the front on this one.
- Futura Free – The minor chords melt you even before Frank writes home. Like the best of finales, it runs through all that’s been said so far and adding that final sparkle. It’s a statement of truth for an artist who remembers the struggle more fondly, with more affection, than he does the success.
The Vibe
Well, if you believe the internet impression then Frank’s spent the last four years locked in a basement studio being deep and pensive and really feeling stuff. It sure sounds like it too, this record is heavy. It is powerful and it is moving. But it also isn’t the grand statement album that it was thought to be. Actually, that might not be fair, because Blonde is undeniably a work of genius, except more of an introspective kind of genius. Frank lives in his head and songs exist around time and memories, they look back in order to draw forward thinking conclusions and it’s bloody beautiful.
I mean straight up gorgeous. In keeping things simple on a sonic level, it’s that glorious voice that breathes and ebbs and sways its way around the songs, caressing the minimal instrumentation in this way that’s almost lustful at times. Which is one sign of great R&B, by the way. It also gives you this real late night vibe. Not late night in a sexy way but late night in that can’t sleep, can’t stop thinking kinda way. That had too many drinks and I’m sitting up alone kinda way. Staring out the apartment window, watching the city at slumber, a few lights flickering. Sunglasses in the dark, rewriting that same damn line kinda way. In a lot of places it reminds me of Bob Dylan’s equally uncategorisable masterpiece ‘Blonde on Blonde’ and yes, the title is one of those ways.
The title’s a tricky one, it seems to be deliberately ambiguous as even Frank himself has used both spellings. There seems to be this sort of yin/yang thing going on, things in pairs with the two albums, the same but different. Some have said that the dual titles reflect his bisexuality, since in French the words blond = masculine and blonde = feminine. There’s a tonal shift in the song Nights that happens to come at exactly halfway through the record, not to mention the fact that there are two tracklists here, one for the digital release (which is the one reviewed) and another slight changeup for the magazine’s physical release. “I got two versions”.
It all adds to this duality thing, yet as much as than anything else I’d suggest it’s Frank doing his best to stay slippery. To avoid classification. It’s a theme that comes back over and over, he doesn’t wanna be boxed in. Especially as a bisexual man working in the hip hop/r&b fold, he’s been endlessly categorised in his music and in his life and the dude is just trying to do his own thing. “I’d rather live outside…”
For all the time that we waited for this album, he sure hasn’t given us what we might have expected. The usual thing after a breakthrough album is to consolidate that by moving closer to the mainstream. Frank has withdrawn, both physically and musically. There is no Thinkin’ ‘Bout You on this LP, no knockout single. A few tunes have great hooks but we’re talking some conceptual stuff here, which is in keeping with the trend in hip hop/R&B these days of the greats, the top tier of talent, reclaiming their artistic visions by making albums. Not collections of songs but proper, side-A/side-B albums. Meant to be heard in order, start to finish.
Frank belongs in that same class.
The Music
The fact that there isn’t a lead single here is a deliberate thing, you listen to the album and you can hear how he’s purposefully steering away from that. There is only a handful of tracks that have proper beats on them, most are built around a mournful organ or keyboard and some a twinkling guitar or two. It defies expectations.
Nikes, the opening track, is among the most immediately accessible (a helpful trait for an opener) with its laconic 808s and that swelling keyboard sound like his Odd Future mate Earl has used so well recently. But then he starts singing and that wonderful voice is filtered through some chipmunk effect. The man giveth and the man taketh away. Not that that stops him from swinging from capitalist commentary to basketball to Shakespeare in the space of the first verse (“Said she need a ring like Carmelo, must be on that white like Othello”).
It’s a beautiful song with some stunning lines and then the fog clears and he’s signing in his own (slightly autotuned) voice: “We’ll let you guys prophesise, we gon’ see the future first.” The people can play at guessing his next move but ultimately he calls the shots. He writes the future.
The future is something he’s a little obsessed with. Not only the future, but the past. His first mixtape was called ‘Nostalgia, Ultra’. A sense of nostalgia fills every song here with a wistfulness that penetrates everything. Pink + White ends with Frank (and Beyonce) mourning the lost innocence of childhood, comparing that feeling to immortality. Somehow, his songs are more vivid when they set anchor in the past.
And yet they’re so sparse - although if it all feels unfinished at first, that’s only because you need to give these songs time to crawl in under the covers with you. Whereas Endless plays like a demo mixtape, Blonde certainly feels like a constructed piece of work, but even then there aren’t many songs with more than a couple instruments on them and most songs, we’re talking the same sorta sounds. Keyboards or organs, the odd drum/percussion. There are guitars here, way more than you’d expect to hear, while Skyline To has a pretty awesome theremin break. Again, if you were expecting what everyone else is doing then you’re on the wrong wavelength there.
In the lead in, Frank had said he wanted to channel the Beatles and the Beach Boys on this album. The Beatles are explicitly channelled on White Ferrari when he quotes Here, There and Everywhere (“I care for you still and I will, forever…”) and several songs have that God Only Knows feel to them. Not so much in the layering of elements (the vocal layers in the last minute of that song are perfect, they will never be topped), more in that teetering way that song exists on the verge of a complete breakdown. It’s a song that’s so goddamn beautiful that you simply have to cry. There is a trilogy of songs at the backend of Blonde with moments that approach that same thing: White Ferrari, Seigfried and Godspeed. It’s almost too much, “White Ferrari, had a good time”. Bon Iver sings the last verse there. Add him to a stunning list of collaborators that also include James Blake, Jamie XX, Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, Jonny Greenwood, Kim Burrell, Tyler, the Creator and way too many more. Seek the mag for the lot of them. It’s a bit of a riddle, he credits people as inspirations (like David Bowie) and others as samples or contributors all without really specifying. On Seigfried he quotes Elliott Smith. On Close To You he quotes Burt Bacharach.
Ah yes, and Andre 3000 pops up to drop a few bars on Solo (Reprise). The initial Solo might be the best tune on the album, it swoons you in the way it chops between hook and verse and the flow he hits in that first verse is something else. The slight stutter in his “ss-solo” is great, the way the organ walks between chords is even greater. The scatting at the end of the chorus is the greatest. Not to mention the incredible wordplay between solo and so low and inhale and in hell, for example.
And then a couple tracks later in waltzes Andre with his own 80 second feature and he’s in immense form. At first it sounds like braggadocio until you hear it back and with each subsequent listen it takes on more of a tragic sentiment. Particularly the send-off…
After 20 years in, I'm so naive
I was under the impression
That everyone wrote they own verses
It's comin' back different and yeah that shit hurts me
I'm hummin' and whistlin' to those not deserving
I've stumbled and lived every word
Was I working just way too hard?
No mate, you did it right. You’re still doing it right.
Be Yourself is an interlude in the form of a voice message left by “mom” (excuse the US spelling there). Frank’s mother? Turns out it’s the mother of one of his childhood friends. The message is pretty much a stern warning against drink and drugs and the dangers of the world. There’s also an interlude called Facebook Story where Sebastian Akchoté-Bozovic where he details how he was dumped by a girlfriend for not accepting her on Facebook: “It’s virtual, it makes no sense. I’m in front of you, I don’t need to accept you on Facebook”. These modern disconnects, inching between even our personal relationships.
Revelations
“We’ll let you guys prophesise, we gon’ see the future first”
“I'll mean something to you”
http://frankocean.tumblr.com/image/149245577141
“RIP Trayvon, that nigga looked just like me”
“I thought that I was dreaming, when you said you loved me”
“It's hell on Earth and the city's on fire/Inhale, inhale there's heaven
There's a bull and a matador duelling in the sky/Inhale, in hell there's heaven”
Among so many other things, the mag has a list of his favourite songs.
“Keep a place for me, for me. I'll sleep between y'all, it's nothing.”
That line reminds me of the one in Prince’s When You Were Mine, (“…when he was there, sleeping in between the two of us…”), which is on that list of songs, and which in a eulogy for The Artist, Frank called his favourite ever song.
There’s also his favourite movies. It’s an incredible list too. Both of them are.
“I came to visit ‘cause you see me like a UFO”
“Want to see nirvana, but don't want to die yeah”
What’s crazy is that it seems that Frank Ocean broke his record deal with Def Jam/Universal to put out Blonde. Endless was done through them and possibly to finish that contract, though as an Apple exclusive that must have pissed them off still. While this album was effectively self-released, though still through Apple Music.
“We pour a taste out for the dead. This is the blood, the body, the life right now”
Name another person on the planet with enough pull to get both Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar on their album… and then only use them for backing vocals.
“White Ferrari – Had a good time”
“I’d do anything for you (in the dark)”
Frank Ocean: “I wrote a story in the middle – it’s called ‘Godspeed’. It’s basically a reimagined part of my boyhood. Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years. It’s surprisingly my favourite part of my life so far. Surprising, to me, because the current phase is what I was asking the cosmos for when I was a kid. Maybe that part had it’s rough stretches too, but in my rearview mirror it’s getting small enough to convince myself it was all good. And really though… It’s still all good.”
“I had the time of my life making all of this
Thank you all
Especially those of you who never let me forget I had to finish
Which is basically everyone of y'all
Haha. Love you”
Finale
Blonde ends with the rambling Futura Free, another play on his obsession with passing time crossed with Wes Anderson’s favourite font (the director who pops up in Frank’s film list). The longest track on the album wanders from reflections on fame and artistic success (“I ain’t making minimum wage, momma”) to sex and religion and all sorts, in a stream of consciousness that rises above this backtracked organ sound with a few gorgeous keys. His phrasing wobbles and switches tempo in a fascinating way. At one point he indulges (and envies) the Tupac is Alive conspiracy.
And then, as he swings it all around to how much his life has changed since his first album, again with the yearning to return to those days before when things were simple and free, he seems to be grateful. Not only for the present, but for the past and the future too. Grateful for all he’s got and all he’s had. When he sings about heartbreak he sings about it like he wouldn’t change a thing. Not one ounce of pain. It’s better, after all, to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all – so the saying goes. And no, he can’t go back and live things over but he wouldn’t want to anyway. It’s enough just to know that the memories are there.
Following which the track fades into silence before re-emerging with the same backing track to Be Yourself as Frank’s younger brother, Ryan, is interviewed along with Sage Elsesser, an old recording from when Ryan was about 11. And the carefree nature of it, the childish giggles and the spiritual wanderlust is so pure and so honest that after all we’ve travelled with Frank through Blonde, it really tugs at the emotions one last time.
How far is a light year? How far is a light year? How far have we wandered from what we can never get back?
But we’ll let his little brother have the last word…