channel orange: the album that shaped frank ocean

To this day Ocean has seemingly sent his fan-base on an emotional frenzy with 17 metaphorically powerful written and produced tracks on his first official album after several small EP’s including ‘Nostalgia Ultra’ and ‘Lonny Breaux’ were only publicised and played by his most loyal fans.

Legendary musical influences were so clearly whispering their musical secrets in Ocean’s ear as he began creating his lyrical art-work that is Channel Orange. Such influences including the renaissance of rock band ‘Pink Floyd’ featuring psychedelic guitar solos from talent as strong and audacious as artist ‘John Mayer’ and thoughtful collaborations from intuitive rapper ‘Andre-3000’ making a magical contribution to a beautifully crafted album.

Just as this generation began to lose pure and talented musicians, we were gifted with drug-related songs such as ‘Pyramids’, nevertheless Ocean still managing to sing like an angel and grasp the hearts of millions with his undeniable talent. With this album in mind and a with a second recent album release ‘Blond’ after a 2-year disappearance from the man himself, our infatuations as Frank’s fans have only increased, allowing us to metaphorically hand the man a trophy for adamantly being one of the greatest gifts to music, as ‘Ryan Dombal’ senior editor of the online forum ‘Pitchfork Reviews’ seconds, stating that Frank has ‘proven himself to be among the most gifted singer-songwriters of his generation’.

Pyramids Live - 

It was when this album was born that I understood the term ‘cloud rap’ - rap music that allows for entrancing vibes, almost as if you have figuratively overdosed on Ocean’s music and the captivating sense of it. ‘Pyramids’ revealed us to Ocean’s sweet tenor and unique production of Clams Casino, as opposed to his usual effortless soprano, the listener is exposed to kaleidoscope 80’s style synth’s and soulful repetitions of the lyric ‘she’s working at the pyramid tonight’ with empathy in his words, we, as listeners and as fans, can almost feel it too.

With the spirit of Marvin Gaye and a pinch of 90’s rap, ‘Pink Matter’ came to life. A song in particular on the album that is favoured and replayed. Andre’s verse manages to slowly unfold with punctual descriptions of his love for women, particularly ‘thick women’ – with bigger asses. It’s as if the track was made for himself only in the community of modern rap and any other feature wouldn’t come close to the impact in which Andre’s accompaniment provided alongside hypnotic, slow paced vocals.

Sexuality as a subject within the Frank Ocean community was totally diminished. It’s as if the magical creature knew himself that revealing his true sexual identity to the world would be of bad publicity and judgement, but by birthing this album the entire topic and ‘issue’ as some would class it, would automatically be forgotten. 

Rnb, funk and trance-pop took us on a journey, one which is rare, never before created, beautiful and soulful. If I was forced to recognise any fault of his, it would be that a second album release couldn’t have come sooner.