Ocean cares more about the persistence of time than his Twitter followers might think that half-bar cribbed from “Here, There, and Everywhere” on “White Ferrari” only missed Revolver’s 50th anniversary on August 5 because Ocean instead changed objectives to outwit a snitching New York Times. Maybe he found some new perspective of his own, though he’s always been wide open: “American Wedding” in 2011 did a fine job of sneaking hijab into “Hotel California.” “I’m not brave,” he sings on Blonde’s “Seigfried,” before quoting an already-dead Elliott Smith. CLAUSTROPHOBIA CONQUERED”) have added retroactive weight to his claim. At the time, it annoyed.īut the steady persecution of queer and black Americans (Trayvon Martin “look just like me” he observes on “Nikes”), the death of Prince (who too went schizo-sexual on his third album), and his own Tumblr posts (like March 2013’s “JUST LOCKED MYSELF IN THE TRUNK OF MY CAR.

I bore witness to him calling himself brave at Philly’s packed Union Transfer in July 2012. He was too good for the box he was lumped in, story at 11. When white people claim that Ocean “transcends R&B,” they mean he transcends PBR&B, that amorphous deconstructionist thing that, despite what you may have read, existed concurrently with Jill Scott and Jazmine Sullivan. His pansexuality is as unsurprising now as it was novel in 2012. On the same song, Ocean promises, “We’re not in love, but I’ll make love to you” a couple tracks later on “Solo,” the most emotive vocal on Blonde insists, “In hell there’s heaven.” There’s no hair this guy can’t split. That’s what John and Yoko named their first album of Unfinished Music, after all. Which - as Genius has already noted about the video version of “Nikes,” - sounds a bit like “two virgins,” to Ocean’s delight.

So he doesn’t pretend that the duality inherent in his second studio album, Blonde, means it’s got a shot at outliving anything else. But the man born Christopher Breaux has made clear that he understands mortality ever since he Imma-let-you-finish’d a minor Coldplay single to eulogize a “dying world.” ‘Ye thought that leaving his album open-ended would keep it, theoretically, in the press cycle forever. Frank Ocean fixed “Wolves.” No, really: Kanye was onto something when he called The Life of Pablo a “living album,” because - while he’s on the right track to keep it available solely in BitTorrent territory (or TIDAL hahaha), away from carbon-based corporeality - everything that lives must die.

Blonde frank ocean album review