I’ve gone back and forth on writing this for a long time. It’s a bit surprising that I never really written about this album, but at this point it feels like everything that needed to be said about this project has been said.

Still, I felt like I had to do it for myself at least, and I had to do it quick. With an alleged Coachella performance on the horizon, the possibility of a new release is higher than ever, although I’m not getting my hopes up. So then the next conundrum. What do I actually want to write about it?

I could sit here and list all the fun facts and trivia Frank fans love to spit out about this album in some vain attempt to prove how big of a fan I am. Like the fact that the Nights beat switch happens exactly halfway through the song, simultaneously marking the exact midpoint of the album, clearly emphasizing the themes of duality in the album. How there’s a demo version of Nights that seemingly has a Kendrick Lamar verse. Like the fact that there’s not one, not two, but three versions of Nike’s, that we know of. I could even list some of the more recent facts, like how Andre 3000 recorded his verse on Solo (Reprise) in Austin over a completely different beat. But that would be boring. However, I will say, a lot of this information reveals that Blonde was a very, very different project in its earlier iterations, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Instead, I’d like to just show my appreciation for this album, and detail what Blonde means to me, including everything that surrounds it; the buildup, Endless, “Boys Don’t Cry”, and the few live performances of these tracks.

Honestly, at the time of it’s release, I was nowhere near as big of a Frank Ocean fan as I am now. I was definitely looking forward to new music, but a big part of that was all the buzz. Everyone around me was buzzing with excitement. Channel Orange was an amazing album, and everyone expected the follow-up to exceed it. A large part of the hype was a result of the many rumored release dates that came and went, many of the which originated from cryptic Frank Ocean tumblr posts.

On August 1st, a black and white livestream appeared on Frank Ocean’s website, featuring a warehouse in which Frank was building… something, no one really knew what at the time. The soundtrack featured a variety of ambient music snippets and loops (some of these ended up being portions of Endless tracks, others are seemingly unused anywhere else).

The New York Times ran an article at some point which stated that the album was due out in August 5th, and the commonly held belief is that Frank did not intend for this information to be out, the release was supposed to be a surprise. So he delayed it by two weeks, much to the chagrin of his increasingly impatient fanbase. In that time, the livestream just simply continued, with the same footage looping over and over again. This didn’t stop people from watching in hopes that something would start to happen. On August 19th, something finally did.

The livestream had been running for over two weeks, and at this point careful observers of the stream noticed that new footage started to be introduced. After building large rectangular wooden blocks, Frank started to paint them. Once that was complete, Frank Ocean started to piece together the various blocks he had painstakingly constructed, and the soundtrack changed. Endless played as Frank built and ultimately ascended, a spiral staircase, the album ending when he reached the top.

The symbolism here is quite obvious. After years of having disputes with Def Jam, literally from the very beginning, the release of Endless marked Frank Ocean’s completion of the contract requirements he had with the label, meaning he now had freedom to operate independently. Freedom which he had been planning to take advantage of almost immediately.

We now finally had the new Frank Ocean album, but it was a visual album with no real timestamps for the track list. It made it difficult to distinguish which song was which, and it wasn’t available as a standalone album anywhere. The fact that the only way to listen to it outside of watching the video, was to rip the audio from it, meaning it wasn’t very good quality didn’t really help (that wouldn’t come until the release of the vinyl in 2018). All of these little factors made the release a bit underwhelming, or at the very least didn’t truly live up to expectations. The very next day however, made it clear that this saga was not over yet, Endless was just the start.

The confusion began when a music video for a song titled “Nikes,” which wasn’t even on Endless, was released on Apple Music overnight, literally hours after the release of Endless. Then, that morning, pop-up stores were announced in LA, NY, Chicago, and London. Here, attendees received a free copy of the “Boys Don’t Cry” magazine, complete with a CD containing Blonde tucked into the middle of the magazine. That evening, at 4:30 PM EST, Blonde was released through Apple Music.

Despite being released during the day, I didn’t get the chance to hear it for myself until that night. The album would be exclusive to Apple Music for the first two weeks of its release, meaning I had to find a download with decent audio quality. I quickly found it through the Frank Ocean subreddit, and settled in for the night, ready to give this album my full attention.

I put on my headphones, and listened to it all the way through. I wasn’t sure what to think. It wasn’t what I had expected. It was nothing like Channel Orange, not quite a continuation of the direction he took with Endless, and it was like nothing I had ever really heard before. I couldn’t describe it, it just felt very surreal. That’s the only word I could up with at the time, surreal. I didn’t understand what I had just listened to, but I was curious, I wanted to understand. At this point it was late at night, but I decided to give it another listen. As I started to doze off, tired from a “long day at school” or whatever, slipping in and out of consciousness, that feeling of surrealness was only elevated. I could only think to myself, “this doesn’t sound real,” I was half convinced that I was dreaming.

Eventually the curiosity turned into appreciation and adoration, which might have turned into obsession (it’s still my most listened to album of all time and most of that was 2017) (yes I was going through it). It’s a truly unique project, and I can still honestly say there’s nothing like it. There are other albums that I think encapsulate many of the same emotions, but sonically I think there’s even fewer projects that I can point to. The minimalist instrumentation manages to feel rich and full, largely in part due to the vocals and their processing, or lack thereof. Frank makes extensive use of pitch shifting to depict different emotions, characters, or stages in his life. If this Reddit post is to be believed, there’s no compression on his vocals applied during mixing, meaning that he could have more control over the dynamics of his voice. Frank also makes use of the prismizer effect, which has been used by the likes of Bon Iver, and Francis and the Lights. I’m definitely not saying Frank pioneered it, but he was amongst the first artists who brought the effect to the forefront.

Perhaps Frank’s boldest production choice, however, was the lack of percussion throughout the project. You’ll find some here and there, like on Nights, but a large majority of the project does not have drums, or at least not a whole lot of them. This put off a lot of people, and I honestly had not even really noticed that it was “missing” drums until I started seeing it criticism of this decision. This is one of its most distinct characteristics, and one of the hardest to emulate well.

Listening to this project was one of the first times I really felt like I could feel how much work had gone into it, how much care and attention was devoted to this one singular project. After years of struggle against Def Jam, Frank finally released his most intricate, personal, and vulnerable album, and it was released completely on his own terms, with full ownership of it. It’s no coincidence that Endless which preceded it by just a few hours, culminated in him reaching the top of the spiral staircase.

It sparked a deeper interest in not just music, but artistry in general for me. Paired with the “Boys Don’t Cry” magazine which I eventually acquired when he sold them through his website, I found a lot of inspiration. I had been doing photography for a little bit by that time, but I still didn’t really understand it as an art form. I think that magazine contributed to my understanding of using photography for expression, for storytelling, to get some sort of message or idea across. Frank has pointed to photography as an inspiration several times, and through the “Boys Don’t Cry” magazine, he was able to showcase a lot of his own photographic work, as well as collaborate with other artists. Particularly noteworthy is the opportunity he had to work with Ren Hang before his passing. It’s an art form he clearly has a lot of appreciation for, and a practice he wishes he took up sooner.

This multimedia approach, which encompassed a livestream, visual album, pop-up stores, magazines, all of this is a part of Blonde to me. Endless is it’s own distinct project, but it’s context within the release of Blonde is hard to ignore. Frank himself didn’t really give it the same treatment. To this day it’s STILL not on streaming services, and it only really exists in it’s physical forms. Def Jam were the ones that would benefit the most from Endless, not Frank, so it’s understandable on some level, and in some ways, I think it’s neat that the only legitimate way to listen to it is through the CD, Vinyl, or VHS (yes I’m serious).

We never got a proper tour for Blonde. Frank did a short round of festival appearances, in which he was accompanied by a full string section, longtime collaborator Buddy Ross (he made the instrumental that plays over the interludes), Alex G, Vegyn, Spike Jonze, among others. The fan-shot footage from those few shows is all we have in terms of live performances. By then, the Blonded singles had been released (Chanel, Biking, Lens, Provider), meaning even those tracks got performances. There’s real, official footage shot by Spike Jonze of every single one of these shows. There’s likely footage of the entirety of this tour, start to finish, and then some. Not a single clip of this footage has ever been released.

Some of the most notable portions of these shows include an extended version of “Good Guy” which is absolutely sublime, and a rap intro to “Self Control” tentatively titled “Poolside Convo," which smoothly transitions into the main track. There’s an extended version of “Close To You” that has Brad Pitt sitting on stage for some reason, and every other song has minor variations when compared to the recorded versions, as is typical of live performances. I don’t have the words to describe how painful it is that I didn’t get to experience any of this, and no, I am not going to Coachella this year.

It’s hard to say or really know just how big of an influence this project has had on current and future artists. Frank alone has been an inspiration to so many artists, but Blonde really pushed him to a whole other level. The artists that have listed it as an influence include Lorde, James Blake, SZA, Kendrick Lamar, and I’m sure the list could go on and on.

It’s been six, going on seven, years since Blonde by Frank Ocean was released. It’s only gotten better with time, and my appreciation for it grows with each little tidbit of information about the creation of the album that comes out and clarifies another small section of the mythology that surrounds it.

Despite not having a new album in that time, Frank has kept himself busy. He’s been featured in several songs, and he’s done multiple interviews as well, providing a ton of insight into not just his music, but Frank Ocean as a person. We got the aforementioned Blonded singles in 2017 (which I’ll likely write about at some point, that era is also so special to me), a “Moon River” cover in 2018, and a series of singles in 2019-2020 that seemed to indicate that a new album was imminent. But… you know.

There’s been a few intermittent Blonded Radio episodes over the years, but no real new music has been a part of them, instead mostly consisting of playlists, interviews, and spoken word segments. In 2021, he started a luxury jewelry brand named Homer, which uses lab-grown diamonds with a flagship store based in New York. This seems to be a big part of his focus nowadays, but there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that he’s preparing new music.

Whether it releases next week or next decade it really doesn’t matter. There’s so much pressure on artists to continuously create, but quality art takes time. If there’s one thing Frank has proven throughout his career, is that he knows how to make timeless music, and his artistic abilities have only improved with each release. Artists need time to live and experience new things to draw inspiration from, venturing into other disciplines is a great way to come up with novel ideas. From the interviews Frank has done, it’s clear that his philosophy and mindset around music and being an artist constantly evolves over time, as it should! Whatever comes next is likely to be completely different from everything before it, and that’s really exciting to think about. No one knows when the next Frank Ocean project will come, but when he feels it’s finally ready to share with the world, it will be worth the wait.

References

1. André 3000 Reveals ‘Surprising’ Story Behind Frank Ocean ‘Solo (Reprise)’ Verse
2. The Complete Visual History of Frank Ocean’s “Blonde”
3. Frank Ocean Cover Story Interview - W Magazine
4. Frank Ocean is Peerless - GQ
5. Frank Ocean Blonde Interview - NY Times
6. World Exclusive: What Frank Ocean did Next - Financial Times
7. Gayletter Frank Ocean
8. Blonded.blog
9. Frank Ocean Speaks Jewellery Interview Homer
10. Dissect Podcast