Frank knows how to appreciate simple pleasures, but on “Nikes,” he brushes aside the vices of stardom for one of his most poignant moments: “Pour up for ASAP /RIP Pimp C/RIP Trayvon, that n- look just like me.” Likewise, his lead single as a free agent was about as far from a capitalistic commercial push as he could get - a deeply layered, sentimental dirge made beautiful through its subject matter. Ocean released Blonde a day after the enigmatic visual album Endless, which fulfilled his Def Jam contract and allowed him to truly operate as he wished. A lovelorn Ocean confides in his taxi driver and, upon receiving only religious platitudes, realizes begging kinda sucks, whether it’s to God or a would-be partner: “If it brings me to my knees, it’s a bad religion.” After careening between falsetto and plain-sung pleas for most of the song, the Prince-like scream he squeezes into the denouement is one of Channel Orange‘s signature moments. This Channel Orange side D gem is closely intertwined with Ocean’s coming out as bisexual on the eve of the album’s release, and a thematic link to another sparse confessional on the double album’s opening side (more on that later). Frank Ocean – “Bad Religion” (from Channel Orange, 2013)
The chiming, palm-muted guitar line - written by former Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij - nestles a glistening, percussion-free environment for Ocean to come clean over lost love, this time as the heartbreaker.Ĩ. From Nostalgia, Ultra’s “What’s a Radiohead?” mini-sketch to naming his label Boys Don’t Cry, he’s got an appreciation for heady guitar work, which he employs on Blonde’s second track. In the end, we decided “No Church in the Wild” isn’t enough Frank’s song to crack this early career canon, though certainly not out of failing to go hard enough. Parsing through less than a decade of material to come up with the top 10 Frank Ocean songs was no easy task.įrank f-s with some indie rock. It’s crazy to think there was once a time he was saddled with descriptors like “Odd Future crooner Frank Ocean.” In the years since, he’s welcomed us into one of music’s most sensitive psyches and delivered on the promise of an artist whose early-career feature bested both Beyoncé’s and…um… Otis Redding’s on Kanye West and JAY-Z‘s collaborative mega-flex, Watch the Throne. Channel Orange was released five years ago Monday (July 10) and before its arrival, a mixtape and handful of features to Ocean’s name. But four years before Blonde intensified his cultural and critical dominance (as well as his bank account), Frank was just an up-and-comer. Just last year, his profound insight into music consumption finessed him from an unhappy record deal into prosperous free agency. In five years, Frank Ocean has gone from releasing his proper debut album to proving the flimsy absurdity of the words “proper debut album.”
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