And, it would seem that since his spectacular debut-proper Channel Orange left its indelible mark on the pop landscape, Frank Ocean’s been learning the value of these lessons, too.īlonde is at once both complicated and understated, invoking the very best of Channel Orange and rendering it even more fragmented and porous. To view the piece in its entirety - to begin to understand it, and the artist who made it - requires patient and undistracted reflection. Which might feel somewhat incongruous in what are unequivocally urgent times but there’s a hell of a case for slowing down - as consumers, dreamers, creators. Endless might actually be a statement on the art of patience. It would be easy to view the whole thing as a metaphor for the creative process (the “endless” formation, evolution, destruction and/or revision of ideas) – if the warehouse is Frankie’s brain. The staircase is effectively destroyed as he ascends to its summit (around the 38-minute mark), before Frank resumes silently building from scratch all over again. On the 45-minute long visual album Endless, we watch numerous Frank Oceans stalk the interior of a large industrial warehouse as they proceed to construct – in between breaks to check a smartphone – a tall wooden spiral staircase. I’m not sure Frank Ocean set out to foreground these issues, but as impatience began to mount over the consistent delay of the album’s release, they became impossible for him to ignore. He’s acutely aware of this dynamic, and the changing relationships between the consumer, product, art and artist, is a theme suspended in constant and quiet orbit around this project – which is really two projects (neither of which are called Boys Don’t Cry): Endless, the visual album and prelude, and Blonde (or Blond), the album-album. We constructed the mystery for ourselves all he had to do was vanish.
Most of this proved to be either insubstantial, or flatly incorrect. Prior to Endless, Ocean's last proper full-length release arrived with Channel Orange all the way back in 2012.The internet was awash with memes, GIFs, questions, conspiracies, and timelines fastidiously updating and voraciously over-analysing every fresh lead on where exactly Frank Ocean was, and what he was up to. Find a photo of the page via Twitter below.Īlbum contributors /XLNOXTZEIS It has yet to be revealed which artists appear directly on the album, and which are getting credit for sampled work.
The crazy list of contributors includes André 3000, Beyoncé, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Jamie xx, Elliot Smith, Rostam Batmanglij, Pharrell Williams, Rick Rubin, Tyler the Creator and more.
EDT): A fan has uploaded a page from the zine that lists the full credits for Blonde. Pitchforkreports that copies will be handed out, one per person for free. He announced the news on his Boys Don't Cry website.
Ocean previously hinted at a zine project called Boys Don't Cry, and that publication will be released today (August 20) at a series of pop-up shops in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and London. The old name hasn't been entirely abandoned, though. "Nikes" marks the first song on the 17-song tracklisting, which you can see in its entirety down below. Eager Ocean devotees were treated to a video for a brand new track titled "Nikes" earlier this morning (August 20), and now the record formerly known as Boys Don't Cry has been released as Blonde.
He's followed that up with another new full-length album titled Blonde, which is available on iTunes now.Īt the time of the Endless launch, an Apple representative told fans to "Keep an eye out this weekend for more from Frank," and rumours began to circulate that the Boys Don't Cry title had been scrapped entirely. But on Friday (August 19) at midnight, the R&B auteur dropped a surprise Apple-exclusive visual album titled Endless. Published Frank Ocean has been toying with fans, keeping plans for his Boys Don't Cryalbum infuriatingly vague.