November 2015 - Music
Album of the Month - Frank Ocean
I know its been two since this album was released but this album is a classic and a great one to listen to. He's also his own man, a distinctive voice with no real analogue in R&B, or anywhere else in today's pop. Like his rapper comrades in the Odd Future collective, Ocean writes with a precise sense of place: His tales are laid in decadent, sun-dazzled L.A., a landscape teeming with privileged slackers ("Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends/Super rich kids with nothing but fake friends"), unemployed guys mooching off their stripper girlfriends ("Pyramids"), lovelorn sad sacks who pour out their hearts to Muslim cab drivers ("Bad Religion"). He's a subtle storyteller, with a social consciousness that surfaces in heart-breaking details: the cash-strapped father in "Sierra Leone" who sings his infant daughter to sleep while thinking, "Baby girl, if you knew what I know," the addict in "Crack Rock" whose family has "stopped inviting you to things/Won't let you hold their infant." The music touches on Seventies funk, Eighties electro, and moody, downtempo hip-hop; there are chord changes straight out of Wonder's Innervisions, airy vamps that nod to Gaye's Here, My Dear, snarling guitars that recall Prince's Purple Rain.
But when Ocean reins himself in, tucking his words and melodies into tighter verse-chorus structures, the songs have startling force. "You know you were my first time, a new feel/It won't ever get old, not in my soul … Do you think about me still? ... 'Cause I been thinkin' 'bout forever." Ocean sings those lines in the woozy "Thinkin Bout You," his falsetto rippling over murmuring electronic percussion. And, of course, it's just a love song – an anthem for anyone, anywhere, who's found love, and lost it. My rating 9/10.
I know its been two since this album was released but this album is a classic and a great one to listen to. He's also his own man, a distinctive voice with no real analogue in R&B, or anywhere else in today's pop. Like his rapper comrades in the Odd Future collective, Ocean writes with a precise sense of place: His tales are laid in decadent, sun-dazzled L.A., a landscape teeming with privileged slackers ("Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends/Super rich kids with nothing but fake friends"), unemployed guys mooching off their stripper girlfriends ("Pyramids"), lovelorn sad sacks who pour out their hearts to Muslim cab drivers ("Bad Religion"). He's a subtle storyteller, with a social consciousness that surfaces in heart-breaking details: the cash-strapped father in "Sierra Leone" who sings his infant daughter to sleep while thinking, "Baby girl, if you knew what I know," the addict in "Crack Rock" whose family has "stopped inviting you to things/Won't let you hold their infant." The music touches on Seventies funk, Eighties electro, and moody, downtempo hip-hop; there are chord changes straight out of Wonder's Innervisions, airy vamps that nod to Gaye's Here, My Dear, snarling guitars that recall Prince's Purple Rain.
But when Ocean reins himself in, tucking his words and melodies into tighter verse-chorus structures, the songs have startling force. "You know you were my first time, a new feel/It won't ever get old, not in my soul … Do you think about me still? ... 'Cause I been thinkin' 'bout forever." Ocean sings those lines in the woozy "Thinkin Bout You," his falsetto rippling over murmuring electronic percussion. And, of course, it's just a love song – an anthem for anyone, anywhere, who's found love, and lost it. My rating 9/10.
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