Frank Ocean is staged like a stoned Depp. “FUCK, SORRY .. I TOOK A NAP, BUT IT’S PLAYING ON APPLE RADIO RN” he wrote in the early hours of Sunday on his personal Tumblr blog.
This referred to “Blonde”, the much-anticipated and newly released second album of R & B singer. Ocean announced the plate before nearly three years, but repeatedly postponed without comment, thus hochgejazzt the successor to the acclaimed debut “Channel Orange” for probably hottest release of the year – and now did so, as if he had slept through by a whisker.
But that’s not Slackertum: On “Blonde” creates Ocean it seriously, to write the names of his sources of inspiration wrong ( “Elliot Smith”) and to rename the album so confusing that even two days after publication is not yet clear whether the 17 songs now actually “Blonde” (written on the title) or “Blonde” (available at Apple Music and the accompanying magazine “Boys Do not Cry”) hot.
Taking the preceding four years stupid announcements and over and the Friday night released as a teaser Visual Album “Endless” to the mess can really only one conclusion: The guy has no longer all
Rap on indie sensation course
How much truth is in the Verpeiler image, of course, can not verify it. In Ocean is in fact one thing is certain: that nothing is certain. And precisely this remoteness has always fascinated him the pop world, it is something like the founding myth of megastars Frank Ocean.
As of yet appeared as Christopher Edwin Breaux six years ago on the scene, he was a ghost.
No one knew very little about him, only that he had somehow come from New Orleans to Los Angeles, hired themselves as a songwriter for various hip hop and R’n’B greats and had a voice has to Eisbergeschmelzen.
Getty Images
Frank Ocean at the Grammys 2013
Nothing more is needed also, even so ran his career in an unprecedented staccato: in February 2011, he dropte his first EP “Nostalgia, Ultra”, three months later he greeted by “Goblin”, the second album of his Odd Future-mates Tyler , The Creator.
In June became public that he had resorted Jay-Z and Kanye West for their “Watch The Throne” under the arms, in August he was titular character of “Fader”. Barely a year later the debut album “Channel Orange”, a genre busting masterpiece of a size that one encounters only once per decade. It rolled to the music world, brushed rap to indie sensation Course, Ocean brought a Grammy and made him one of the most popular musicians of the planet.
However, the man Frank Ocean remained the old ghost, negotiated neither his art yet his private life in the public – and seeded the ultra public pop business thus again a breeze his old mystery a.
Memo to yourself
Who behind it just clever marketing or just the stoned slacker suspects, but is wrong.
Oceans restlessness served rather to protect his creative free space. Mid-2012, shortly after “Channel Orange” Ocean wrote a Tweet: “If you’re a writer you can write anything..prose, songs, raps, novels, plays, films, laws..take the governor off your gift . Note to self, “he wrote. Loosely translated: you can create as an artist anything if you just free. In retrospect seems Ocean the memo to have taken seriously in themselves, even after the immense success of his debut, he is the sole author of his artistic history remained.
This request must keep in mind to “Blonde” to understand. As man Frank Ocean is the plate complicated unyielding and temperamental. She does not play by the rules faster arousal for breakfast Radio and also works fundamentally different from the other big pop albums of the year. Where Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” Kanye West’s “The Life Of Pablo” or Drakes “views” so much Pop gather in how the file size permits, one seeks to “Blonde” obvious Hits vain. Instead Ocean is almost entirely abstract qualities: crystalline sound textures and this unique voice
AP
guest appearance on “Blonde”: Singer Beyoncé
this frame also many Superstar collaborators have to bow to “Blonde”, whose list reads like somebody indiscriminately copied names from the Wikipedia entry on pop music.
institutions like Pharrell Williams and Kanye West appear not as a public appeal on lighthouses, but disappear entirely in Oceans subtle pop design. Beyoncé about accompanied “Pink + White” only with wordless harmonies, Kendrick Lamar barks on “Skyline To” a few backups into the microphone, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood playing a handful of simple guitar parts, James Blake only falls not to continue. And also advertised in the credits Beatles Sample you look hard in vain.
DPA
Frank Ocean in 2013 in France
In principle, donates “Blonde” the same chaos that Ocean already spread in advance. Whether you listening now whether the unexpected guitar-based music is surprised or even the fact that Ocean weeks webcast builds wooden crates – the effect is the same: you have to bend, patiently wait and hope that something audible pops out. Basically, the four years after “Channel Orange” and the two appeared at the weekend plates namely one and the same: cryptic inflammatory speeches for artistic freedom.
But Ocean manages to bring to “Blonde” order to the self-inflicted chaos. Between all sorts weirdness , an endless frame of reference and reflections to alcohol, drugs, women, men, consumer culture and white sports car is strikingly direct insight see Oceans inner life and, yes, beautiful Popmomente.
tunes like the classic tick-tack-R’n’Bs of “Nights” or the meandering soul waltz “Pink + White” sit down immediately fixed in the ear. Songs like the torn Futures gospel Sketch “Godspeed” and the tearjerker “White Ferrari” seem made for eternity. And if Ocean to “Seigfried” (sic!) A broken “I’m not brave” croaks from the soul, rich three words for a few furtive crocodile tears.
All this goes only as far as permitted by the author Ocean, it must be in the Internet age again until used. It will therefore take a while to understand how well “Blonde” really is. It is not much. No Instant Classic, no neo-soul masterpiece like “Channel Orange” and certainly not a mainstream pop. But one thing for sure: the statement of a man who wears his art in the heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment