A few short weeks ago, Odd Future affiliate and R&B cult sensation Frank Ocean came out with two albums back-to-back in a span of three days after an extended hiatus and a series of teasing hints and false release dates, sending mildly disgruntled fans into a frenzy. The first was Endless, an Apple Music exclusive visual album a la Lemonade (albeit far less saturated with imagery), followed by Blonde, the title of which nobody, including official sources, can really agree on how to spell. Below are reviews of both projects.
Endless
Review by Matt Wolf
With much mystery and elusiveness surrounding his music, sexuality, and professional activity, Frank Ocean is one of the current music industry’s more enigmatic big names. Originally a ghost-writer, he rose from the dead in 2011 with his breakout mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra. His single “Novacane” ignited his success, which only grew after his extremely impressive first LP Channel Orange.
After all this fame and success, a whole lot of nothing followed. Aside from the occasional feature and only one song, “Memrise,” posted on Tumblr, the singer’s releases came to a grinding halt. He provided minimal tidbits and inconsistent answers about a forthcoming album in interviews, and even went off the grid for six months after announcing a release date in 2015 which would ultimately prove false. Jeez Frank! A full year passed before Ocean dropped more mysterious hints on his website boysdontcry.co. No exact details surfaced, save for an ominous library book and Apple Music-sponsored footage shot in a warehouse. Official sources reported an August 5th release, yet still that weekend yielded no album. Finally, on August 19th, the visual album Endless was released on Apple Music, and Blonde was released two days later, along with the music video for “Nikes.” Obnoxious as these delays and fake-outs are, all is forgiven by the sheer quality that fans have come to expect from the artist.
Tabling the issue of the music itself, the visual component of Endless is an opus in its own right. Clocking in at forty-five minutes, the video is highly repetitive. Five minutes in, one can grasp the main idea: three Franks Ocean are building something in a big warehouse. Towards the end, the actual object they built, a spiral staircase leading to nowhere, is shown and utilized for a moment before the video winds down in a fairly anticlimactic manner. While the video lacks a developed narrative, it’s practically bursting with symbolism. The artist clearly puts sincere and lengthy thought into his lyrics, and it is fair to assume his video direction must be no different. Every single time the screen fades to black, or the three builders change clothing, or countless other subtleties occur, there is certainly a purpose. Dissecting the intricacies of the video requires a level of patience that most casual listeners do not possess, which speaks to the level of commitment shared by Frank Ocean fans. Endless‘ cinematic element is mostly for devout followers (Frankophiles?), or those who can appreciate an avant-garde experience. The video is rife with complexity and, thanks to its length and unstructured feel, certainly does seem endless.
While the video takes some determination to tackle, the musical underpinnings of the project are sublime. It isn’t as easy to listen to as Channel Orange, but offers many standout tracks regardless. Frank opens the album with a brief intro leading into “(At Your Best) You Are Love,” a lovely Isley Brothers cover in which he thrives in the high register. “Comme Des Garcons,” named after a Japanese fashion brand, has a quicker pace, tropical ambiance, and lyrics regarding an unfaithful partner. On the other hand, the second to last song, “Rushes To” tells the well-written story of a man desperately missing his old lover, accompanied by melancholy acoustic guitar. My personal favorite is “U-N-I-T-Y”, in which the R&B wildcard raps punchy, resonant bars (“I never ask advice from him ‘cause what could he know?/ Never fuck someone you wouldn’t wanna be though”).
Endless is littered with lyrical gems, writing being one of Frank Ocean’s known strong suits. The poetic song “Wither” might be more fitting in an honors literature class than in this minimalistic composition. In it, Ocean sings, “Hope a garden grows where we dance this afternoon/ Hope our children walk by spring and flowers bloom.” Even those tracks whose lyrics trend toward the generic, such as “Sideways” and “Rushes,” are still amplified by Frank’s delivery. The album has several strategic features, including Jazmine Sullivan contributing soulful vocals to four songs. Endless also contains occasional short interludes, like the brief but powerful “In Here Somewhere,” that serve as buffers between more substantial installments and contribute to the collage-like flow of the project.
Tremendous attention to detail is placed into the audio portion of Endless. At one point, there is a one-sentence sample of a quote by famed drag queen and renowned LGBTQ community figure Crystal LaBeija. The moment is extremely quick yet brilliant, a perfect example of the project’s meticulous style. Other moments, however, just come off a bit pretentious, particularly the song that bookends the album, “Device Control.” An abrupt, unsettling amalgamation of thumping, distorted techno and smartphone-centric vocal drone, it’s a little like a dystopian mind control commercial for our favorite rectangular addiction. Though clever in its ironic commentary, the finale might be a little too high-concept for some tastes and is so sonically disjoint from the rest of the album that it almost sounds like a mistake.
Overall, what holds the project back the most is the video-exclusive format. It’s never quite clear when a song begins and another ends, and that vague blurring of track boundaries and lack of clarity contribute to the album’s amorphous energy. The convenience of being able to easily play a specific song is sacrificed in Endless‘ multimedia presentation, unfortunate for those with limited time and attention spans. The project takes some effort and can suffer from pretension, but overall is just what the people needed to temporarily sate their unquenchable thirst for Ocean water. Cheers to Frank; I, for one, am excited to see what he has in store after his next four year hiatus!
Blonde
Review by Luke Vadala
After all the false alarms and delays, Blonde almost gives you the idea that it had always been meant to be released at the end of summer. On “Skyline To,” for example, the jubilation of a perfect summer night that ends with “pretty fucking/ underneath moonlight,” gives way to morning, “haunting us with the beams,” and the thought that “summer’s not as long as it used to be.” This is one of many examples of the theme of the passage of time, and the transitions that accompany it, which runs through this album.
Prince’s catalogue is indeed one of the few places we can look to find anything of a similar scope to this work. The song “White Ferrari” could even be seen as a complement to “Little Red Corvette”, but Blonde reminded me of Sign O’ the Times in particular, due both to its sprawling nature and the extensive experimentation with pitched-up vocals. And while the references are abundant, with Ocean quoting the likes of the Beatles and Elliot Smith, this album is truly incomparable to anything else.
One factor setting Blonde apart from the vast majority of R&B and pop music in general is its use of space. Drums are integrated very sparsely throughout, and many songs are almost entirely voice and keys or voice and guitar. The resulting effect brings attention to every sonic and lyrical detail.
Every lyric on Blonde seems important, not in the sense that by missing one you will lose some of the idea or intention of the whole, but in the sense that each line is a poetic image of deep emotional potency. Much of it is addressed to a, or multiple, past lover(s), whose path in life seems to have drifted away from the artist’s. On “Godspeed,” he sings “I will always love you like I do,” followed by a wistful “there will be mountains you won’t move,” a feeling that is reflected throughout much of the album up to that point.
His love for this person, and his sadness over their pain, is apparent. Yet mixed with that sensitivity, Blonde contains an equal measure of peace and calmness. While feeling the pain that so pervades our world, he is also detached from it in a way; as he says on Seigfried, “this is not my life/ just a fond farewell to a friend.” The closing track, “Futura Free,” displays Ocean’s thankfulness for life. He reminds us that, despite being super-famous, his needs and desires are just as simple as most of the rest of us: “[as] long as I can fuck three times a day and not skip a meal, I’m good.”
One could write pages about every lyric, but I’ve already said more than enough. This is one you really just have to absorb yourself. That is to say, it’s really, really fucking good. Don’t take my word for it.