September 2016 - Music
Album of the Month - Frank Ocean's Blonde
No one imagined Frank Ocean would return after four years of silence with an album of minimalist, avant-garde R&B, yet here we are, Blonde in hand. Then again, no one could predict what he would return with, or if he would return at all. After the release of Grammy-winning Channel ORANGE and 2011’s Nostalgia, Ultra, Ocean was flooded with fame, a level of attention he avoided: dodging press, turning down guest verses, deleting his Twitter. To return with a record as spacious as Blonde takes confidence, and yet the deeper the album’s explored, the more it seems to be an acceptance of fragility. Ocean trades the accessibility of Channel ORANGE’s conventionalism for the accessibility of purified emotion. There’s a reason he needed years to create Blonde: The album’s rich with influences and thoughts, and shaving them into a cohesive full-length takes, to say the least, quite some time.
For the first time in a long time, an artist riding on hype surfaced with an album that lives up to the very hype that lifted it. Better yet, in time, Blonde will surpass its hype. The album’s greatest feat is its ability to expand when it’s listened to in a new mind-set, each reveal seemingly so apparent that you wonder how you missed it the first time. For that, Blonde should be held as an example; it’s an album of synthesized interests without sampling, without stealing, without influence-as-copyright. He absorbs his influences, pours them through a strainer, and then filters that product once again. Frank Ocean is more than his voice, and Blonde sees him illustrate all the ways in which he’s a true artist.
Art surrounds Frank Ocean now, yet he manages to exist as an artist without an ego — or at least one who doesn’t strive to gloat. It’s possible to want to impact others without wanting the fame that follows suit, and the introverted structure of Blonde demonstrates that. As obvious as the comparison is, that spiral staircase and all of its sleek perfection was built on countless hours of work, boards and nails and shards that only stick out when you lean in to examine them. Ocean did so in making Blonde. We get to do so in listening. My rating 9/10.
No one imagined Frank Ocean would return after four years of silence with an album of minimalist, avant-garde R&B, yet here we are, Blonde in hand. Then again, no one could predict what he would return with, or if he would return at all. After the release of Grammy-winning Channel ORANGE and 2011’s Nostalgia, Ultra, Ocean was flooded with fame, a level of attention he avoided: dodging press, turning down guest verses, deleting his Twitter. To return with a record as spacious as Blonde takes confidence, and yet the deeper the album’s explored, the more it seems to be an acceptance of fragility. Ocean trades the accessibility of Channel ORANGE’s conventionalism for the accessibility of purified emotion. There’s a reason he needed years to create Blonde: The album’s rich with influences and thoughts, and shaving them into a cohesive full-length takes, to say the least, quite some time.
For the first time in a long time, an artist riding on hype surfaced with an album that lives up to the very hype that lifted it. Better yet, in time, Blonde will surpass its hype. The album’s greatest feat is its ability to expand when it’s listened to in a new mind-set, each reveal seemingly so apparent that you wonder how you missed it the first time. For that, Blonde should be held as an example; it’s an album of synthesized interests without sampling, without stealing, without influence-as-copyright. He absorbs his influences, pours them through a strainer, and then filters that product once again. Frank Ocean is more than his voice, and Blonde sees him illustrate all the ways in which he’s a true artist.
Art surrounds Frank Ocean now, yet he manages to exist as an artist without an ego — or at least one who doesn’t strive to gloat. It’s possible to want to impact others without wanting the fame that follows suit, and the introverted structure of Blonde demonstrates that. As obvious as the comparison is, that spiral staircase and all of its sleek perfection was built on countless hours of work, boards and nails and shards that only stick out when you lean in to examine them. Ocean did so in making Blonde. We get to do so in listening. My rating 9/10.
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