Much of this comes in Boys Don’t Cry, which is an impressively polished and elaborate data dump of Mr. Ocean’s absence - and there are many - was a tweet, recently rediscovered, written in March by a woman who met a man at a bar who boasted of teaching Mr. And in the video of “Endless,” a carpenter. An essayist (his Tumblr posts after the Orlando shooting and Prince’s death have been cleareyed and devastatingly felt).
Ocean has achieved with the complexity of this rollout - as well as his ability to mold corporate motives to his benefit - is an almost complete reframing of his public narrative. Ocean’s return came in fits and starts, with release plans hinted at, then abandoned. For Beyoncé, the sudden drop of “Lemonade” underscored her militaristic precision for Kanye West, the ever-changing album “The Life of Pablo” reflected his artistic restlessness for Rihanna, the stumbled rollout of “Anti” matched her confident indifference.įrom a distance, Mr. In 2016, the condition and circumstances of an album’s release are integral to its reception.
(A list of album collaborators appears in the magazine, but full writing and production credits were not immediately made available.) Yet at the same time, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar are here, in largely ceremonial roles. Ocean’s) to a son a story narrated by the French producer Sebastian about the paranoia of the digital age and a kinetic, speed-racer verse from André 3000 on “Solo (Reprise)” that swallows all the air around it. It includes a scolding voice mail from a mother (possibly Mr. “Blonde” is also not precious about the sanctity of Mr. So often on this album, he’s pleading for recognition: “I’ll sleep between y’all, it’s nothing” (“Self Control”), “I’m not him but I’ll mean something to you” (“Nikes”). He excels on the ecstatically relaxed “Pink + White” and the mildly doo-wop-influenced “Self Control.” On the puppyish “Solo,” he’s as close to content as he gets here mostly, he labors over romantic scenarios that leave him vexed, or worse. “Blonde” and “Endless” show someone willing to forsake that progress in service of perfecting a mood. Ocean’s previous projects - the 2011 mixtape “Nostalgia, Ultra” and the 2012 album “Channel Orange” - were products of an intuitive songwriter and a singer just getting comfortable with the outer boundaries of his power. That’s reflected in the range of vocal approaches he takes on “Blonde”: heavy-sigh exhalation, digitally manipulated childlike singing, forceful spoken word, sleepy-eyed rapping, obscured conversation. Ocean writes impressionistically, and sings with a casual sternness, as if sauntering into the studio, smearing out an idea running through his head, then retreating.
Since Thursday, he has released, in effect, two new albums - “Blonde” and a “visual album” called “Endless,” both exclusive to Apple Music - a video for the song “Nikes,” and an oversize art magazine, Boys Don’t Cry, which includes a CD version of “Blonde” and was made available free at pop-up shops in four cities. Ocean has now swapped scarcity for abundance. Lest you mistake the silence of creative gestation for the silence of lethargy, Mr. Silence may not be Frank Ocean’s greatest gift, but it’s one the R&B singer has wielded effectively for most of the four years since his last album, “Channel Orange.” The reactions to his evaporation from public life have been most intriguing to watch - his denial has been seen as a necessary balm against the scrutiny of fame, and then, after a while, a sort of insult, and finally, in the run-up to his just-released projects, a possible sign of failure on the horizon. In this time of relentlessness and ubiquity, there is no art more potent, or shocking, than the art of disappearance.