Blonde (Frank Ocean album)
Blonde is the second studio album by the American singer Frank Ocean. It was released on August 20, 2016, as a timed exclusive on the iTunes Store and Apple Music, and followed the August 19 release of Ocean's video album Endless. The album features guest vocals from André 3000, Beyoncé, and Kim Burrell, among others. Production was handled by Ocean himself, alongside a variety of high-profile record producers, including Malay and Om'Mas Keith, who collaborated with Ocean on Channel Orange, as well as James Blake, Jon Brion, Buddy Ross, Pharrell Williams, and Rostam Batmanglij, among others.
In 2013, Ocean confirmed that his follow up to Channel Orange would be another concept album. Initially known as Boys Don't Cry and teased for a July 2015 release, the album suffered several delays and was the subject of widespread media anticipation leading up to its release. Recording for the album took place throughout 2013 and 2016 at New York's Electric Lady Studios and, after a period of writer's block, in London at Abbey Road Studios and in Los Angeles' Henson Recording Studios. Its physical release was accompanied by a magazine entitled Boys Don't Cry.
Blonde features an abstract and experimental sound in comparison to Ocean's previous releases, encompassing styles such as R&B, pop, soul, avant-garde, indie rock, electronica, psychedelia, and hip-hop. Ocean also notably makes use of pitch shifted vocals. The Beach Boys' de facto leader Brian Wilson is recognized as a strong influence on the album's lush arrangements and layered vocal harmonies, while the guitar and keyboard rhythms on the album are considered languid and minimal. The album's themes surround Ocean dealing with his masculinity and emotions, inspired by sexual experiences, heartbreak, loss, duality, and trauma.
Blonde received widespread acclaim, with critics praising Ocean's introspective lyrics and the album's unconventional and progressive sounds. Critics also complimented the album for challenging the conventions of R&B and pop music. Supported by its lead single "Nikes", the album debuted at number one in several countries, including the United States. It earned first week sales of 275,000 with album-equivalent units in the US, with 232,000 being pure sales, and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Among other publications, Time named it the best album of 2016. Metacritic named it one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year by music publications. In 2020, Pitchfork named it the best album of the 2010s and Rolling Stone ranked it at number 79 on their updated list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Background
On February 21, 2013, Ocean confirmed that he had started work on his next studio album, which he confirmed would be another concept album. He revealed that he was working with Tyler, the Creator, Pharrell Williams, and Danger Mouse on the record. He stated that he was interested in collaborating with Tame Impala and King Krule, and wanted to record the album in Bora Bora. Ocean ultimately began recording at New York's Electric Lady Studios and, after a period of writer's block, recorded in London at Abbey Road Studios in addition to various other studios.In April 2014, Ocean stated that his second album was nearly finished. In June 2014, Billboard reported that the singer was working with a string of artists such as Happy Perez, Charlie Gambetta and Kevin Ristro, while producers Hit-Boy, Rodney Jerkins and Danger Mouse were also said to be on board. On November 29, 2014, Ocean released a snippet of a new song supposedly from his upcoming follow-up to Channel Orange called "Memrise" on his official Tumblr page. The Guardian described the song as: "a song which affirms that despite reportedly changing labels and management, he has maintained both his experimentation and sense of melancholy in the intervening years".
In a personal letter which prefaced the Boys Don't Cry magazine, Ocean stated that he had been inspired by a photograph taken by the photography duo the Collaborationist of a young blonde girl in the back seat of a car. According to Jessica Haye of the Collaborationist, "It was more ambiguous in terms of gender and kind of placed his own experience onto the picture, so he brought a whole other story very personal to him in it". This photograph would be used in promotional material for the album. In his only interview of the album's release cycle, Ocean told Jon Caramanica that a conversation with a childhood friend from New Orleans helped him overcome his writer's block and convinced him to touch on his experiences growing up: "How we experience memory sometimes, it's not linear. We're not telling the stories to ourselves, we know the story, we're just seeing it in flashes overlaid".
Music and composition
Blonde features an abstract, atmospheric sound in comparison to Ocean's previous work, and utilizes a variety of unconventional musical elements. Besides the Beatles, the album draws influences from Stevie Wonder. Additionally, the Beach Boys' de facto leader Brian Wilson is recognized as a strong influence on the album's lush arrangements and layered vocal harmonies. Featuring a use of guitar and keyboard loops, writers noted that the rhythms on the album are languid and minimal. The album's themes surround Ocean dealing with his masculinity and emotions, inspired by personal heartbreak, loss and trauma.The album has been categorized as avant-soul. The Quietus wrote that its form "isn't that of a typical pop or R&B album – it tends to meander into his surreal dreamscapes, cut with jarring samples of conversation, odd effects, drifting guitars and beatless melodies that go on longer than expected." The Daily Telegraph described its sound as "a mellifluous concoction of shimmering melodic haze and ambient mood, almost entirely absent of anything resembling a singalong chorus or club groove." The Observers Kate Mossman characterized the album as "cerebral, non-macho, boundary-free R&B." The Guardian tentatively likened Blonde to a collection of loose sketches and compared its "lush and atmospheric" tracks to experimental and texture-driven albums such as Radiohead's Kid A and Big Star's Third, writing that "the tone is muted and introspective, full of spectral guitar and lacking not just hefty beats but any kind of percussion at all."
Discussing its musical eclecticism, Rolling Stone wrote that "this is an R&B album in only the most elastic and expansive sense of the term" and noted that "minimalist rock guitar and simple electric keyboard work drive numerous songs; twitchy rhythms and bizarre vocal effects creep in from the edges. Songs change shape subtly as they go, rarely ending in the same place they began." Ann Powers described the album as "equal parts psychedelic indie rock, post-IDM electronica, post-U2 / Coldplay-esque Eno-pop, post-Drake hip-hop, and post-Maxwell drifty soul / R&B," and wrote that "experimental, druggy sonics abound." Nina Corcoran from Consequence described Blonde as featuring an avant-garde minimalist style similar to the work of Brian Eno, and noted that Ocean often utilizes "acoustic and electric guitars over traditional synth and bass-heavy R&B." The Independent wrote that "one track bleeds languidly into another, as if we're listening to a long, stoned stream-of-consciousness," and described the album's sound as a "glitchy, miasmic brand of R&B."
The Daily Telegraph noted Ocean's use of varispeed and Auto-Tune effects on his voice, while Greg Kot stated that he utilizes these audio processing devices to employ "two distinct voices, like characters in a play, a recurring theme throughout the album". Spin magazine's Dan Weiss compared his vocal treatments to those of Prince's aborted Camille album. The Daily Telegraph also suggested that Ocean's voice and melodies obscured the experimental nature of his compositions. The album has elements of spoken word. The track "Seigfried" interpolates a spoken word part by Elliott Smith and "White Ferrari" borrows musical elements from the Beatles' song "Here, There and Everywhere", while "Close to You" incorporates a Stevie Wonder sample. Guest vocalist André 3000 contributes a rapid rap verse on "Solo " which has been described as the album's only overt guest feature. In a 2022 interview, André revealed the song was recorded in Austin, Texas years before the album's release and originally featured a hip hop instrumental, before being replaced with a piano arrangement from James Blake. "Pretty Sweet" features gospel choir elements and dissonant noise. The album ends with an interview between Ocean and his brother Ryan, recorded when Ryan was 11 years old.
Release and promotion
On April 6, 2015, Ocean announced that his follow-up to Channel Orange would be released in July, as well as a publication, although no further details were released. The album was ultimately not released in July, with no explanation given for its delay. The publication was rumored to be called Boys Don't Cry, and was slated to feature the aforementioned "Memrise", although the track did not make the final track listing. On July 2, 2016, Ocean hinted at a possible third album with an image on his website suggesting a July or November release date. On August 1, 2016, a live video marked the first update on the website since the library card post from July.Many news outlets reported that August 5, 2016, could be the release date for Boys Don't Cry. The website video was revealed to be promotion for Endless, a 45-minute-long visual album that began streaming on Apple Music on August 19, 2016. The day after the release of Endless, Ocean advertised four pop-up shops in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and London. These shops offered hundreds of free magazines titled Boys Don't Cry, containing photography by Wolfgang Tillmans, Viviane Sassen and others, and a poem by Kanye West about the fast-food chain McDonald's. Later in the day, the album was released exclusively on the iTunes Store and Apple Music. However, the track list differed from the digital version of the album, with an extended version of "Nikes" featuring Japanese rapper KOHH. "Nikes" was officially released as the album's lead single on August 20, 2016.
Rather than going on a typical promotional tour playing radio festivals and appearing on television shows, Ocean spent a month after the release of Blonde, traveling to countries such as China, Japan and France. He also chose not to submit Blonde for consideration at the Grammy Awards, stating "that institution certainly has nostalgic importance... It just doesn't seem to be representing very well for people who come from where I come from, and hold down what I hold down."