for fans of: The Internet, James Blake, Childish Gambino
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| a poor illustration by me |
The only thing that could awaken me from my eight-month writer's block/blogging hibernation was the same cosmic powers that placed Frank Ocean back into public consciousness. Frank's four year hiatus has, along with 'Hotline Bling' and Harambe, provided just enough meme material to last the Internet this long. Thankfully, Frank Is Dead is finally dead as he presents Blonde: possibly the most anticipated album of all time. No pressure then.
Blonde is not a pop album. It's not the euphoric, commercially on-point, occasional sing-a-long Channel Orange that made Frank Ocean a cult icon. Maybe that's why some fans haven't jumped completely on ship... just yet. Blonde is initially faux-avant-garde. It's an exploration, a way for Ocean to find his feet; oozing subtlety and spewing poetry to make Whitman green with envy. The Frank of Channel Orange fame has regenerated, and in his place comes someone every so slightly wary of his musical ambition.
This is mapped out in opening track 'Nikes'. It begins life rich in crispy autotune, interposing lyrics like "R.I.P. Pepsi / R.I.P. Trayvon, that nigga looked just like me" before it meanders into the unmistakable voice that a generation has missed. Much like the rest of Blonde, the noticeable lack of percussion makes it audibly light. Yet, also like Blonde as an entity, the labyrinthine artistry of Ocean weighs rings heavily in the silence.
That's not to say that there aren't parts of Blonde that are dyed orange. Much of the album is gracefully opiated and no longer youthfully hedonistic, yet many of the wistful and dreamy soundscapes wouldn't be far from home with Blonde's predecessor. This rings most true with the first half of the album, particularly with 'Ivy', 'Pink + White' (not to mention that Channel Orange features tracks entitled both 'Pink Matter' and 'White') and 'Skyline To' which excel in the trademark "indie-fied" hip-hop and paradoxically modernly Shakespearean poetry that have secured Ocean's superstardom.
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| photo creds: SPIN |
His aforementioned stardom is one quite unlike any other, best exemplified in the album's use of featured artists. Only a musician who humbly commands the kind of respect that Ocean has could score a Beyoncé feature ('Pink + White')... and make her only provide backing vocals. I'm certain even Jay-Z could never get away with such a feat. It's a similar story with 'Skyline To': upon reading "featuring Kendrick Lamar" on the tracklist, the anticipation mounts to hear maybe an 'Alien Girl' or even a 'untitled 07'-esque refrigerated verse. Instead the rap superstar offers merely six odd words, shifting attention away from him and onto the musical landscape that him and Ocean have created. This composition, again like Blonde as a completed body of work, everything is as mis-matched as it is delicately balanced.
Yet, the most unlikely collaboration on Blonde turns out to be the most winning; possibly the most fitting track on the album's audible aesthetic. 'Self Control' features Swedish hip-hop hero Yung Lean, thus perfectly encapsulating the album's power struggle between its own simplicity and complexity. Every way the robotics bend make it sound like an illegal high in a way that's simultaneously out of this world and grounded firmly on earth. Then the strings kick in: it's affirmed that Blonde was worth the wait. It cements its status as a comfort album - an album for blankets and early mornings and awkward comedowns.
Arguably, Blonde wouldn't have been possible without a changing music industry. As digitalisation has more or less taken over the way audiences consume music (bar the vinyl revolution and emphasis on touring to generate revenue where album sales may miss out), artists are drawing attention to their upcoming releases through alternative mediums. While Beyonce twinned her blockbuster album Lemonade with an accompanying short film and Kanye continues to re-release edited and updated versions of The Life of Pablo, Frank Ocean has too selected streaming exclusivity as well as simultaneously releasing a very experimental visual album and a zine featuring the now-infamous McDonald's poem by Kanye (not worth reading, btw. Just adding it for interest.). And people still say they're "disappointed" with Frank. Sheesh, what's a guy gotta do to get some commendation? He cares 'bout y'all.
Whether he's navigating 21st century perceptions of dating and masculinity in the sketch-like 'Good Guy', churning alternative sunshine beats in 'Nights' or purring out odes to "your speckled face" on 'Seigfried', Blonde proves to be not always easy listening, but always a morphed kind of beautiful. Take your time to listen more than once before you fully form your opinion, because there's way more to Blonde than meets the ear. It was a really difficult album to write about - not even taking my writer's block into consideration. Yet, each time I've relistened there's something I haven't heard before and I'm slowly discovering myself feeling every syllable, every reverberated chord. If you've ever read Beckett, you'd know that everything is detailed and each word and punctuation mark is there for a reason. I feel like Blonde is almost an audible version of this experience. It's an album of nuances, and you've got to be open to being responsive to it all.
