Perfectionism is one thing, but what’s the point of setting deadlines only to defy them? Or building a staircase when you should be making music? Or stepping so far out of genre that half the tracks on your album don’t even have a drum beat? The journalists who have been burned by broken promises and the fans who have eagerly awaited Ocean’s sophomore album have condemned the singer as outrageously, unnecessarily evasive. Since the release of his last album Channel Orange in 2012, Ocean has been teasing at this return, releasing various release dates only to abandon them. Music becomes a vehicle capable of impossible movement, carrying us inside a thought, inside a moment, inside a fantasy.īlonde’s unconventional narrative mirrors the real-life story of how the album got here, and all the different forms it has taken throughout its extended gestation. Returning again and again to scenes from his childhood and adolescence, Ocean leaves linearity by the side of the road. Ocean drives his car across countries and decades, meandering, and zig-zagging. The album-along with the visual album, art magazine, and “Nikes” video-bends genre, bends gender, and bends time. To say that Blonde is not straight is an understatement. In fact, he seemingly finds it easier to access his memories through the figure of the young girl, whose seatbelt invokes a gut memory of entrapment. He does not fit the stereotype of the straight, suburban boy with an encyclopedic knowledge of automobiles. Consciously though, I don’t want straight-a little bent is good.” Ocean is describing his car fanaticism, an obsession that has defined him, while simultaneously articulating a deep alienation. Maybe it links to a deep subconscious straight boy fantasy. Later in the note, he remembers, “ Raf Simons once told me it was cliché, my whole car obsession. The claustrophobia hits as the seatbelt tightens, preventing me from even leaning forward in my seat. “I put myself in her seat then I played it all out in my head. In an excerpt from the Boys Don’t Cry magazine released last week alongside an album, Blonde, a visual album, Endless, and a music video for the song “Nikes,” Ocean writes about an image of a young girl in a car. Like many outsiders, Frank Ocean betrays an obsession with identities and objects just beyond his reach.

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