Frank Ocean’s voice is disguised in an unsettling high-pitch effect that taunts the fans’ thirst to hear his trademark croon even further. Let’s also remember that with a debut as beloved as his, and an Internet hater culture that makes a sophomore slump nearly inevitable, Ocean faced the immeasurable pressure of millions of fans all wondering the same thing: Would the music and message of Blonde be everything we’d come to expect this time around? But after years of excruciating suspense, our only hope was to press play, and what we heard was the exact emotional, esoteric masterpiece we’d been yearning to hear since Channel Orange. On Blonde, Frank Ocean fearlessly balances avant-garde themes and aesthetics with cathartic pop bliss, the way any classic artist would hope to.Īnd so it begins with “Nikes,” a song title that baits as a sell-out pop radio single, and delivers the polar opposite. Kendrick’s concept album pitched a silent war with the status quo of meaningless materialism in popular music, leaving Ocean on thin ice as we gazed at the final track list with an opening song called “Nikes” and another named “White Ferrari” further down. A lot has happened in the realm of black culture since Ocean’s four-year disappearance, from the dawn of the Black Lives Matter movement to Kendrick Lamar’s paradigm-shattering racial commentary on To Pimp A Butterfly. Just set aside your generic allegiances and try to appreciate what Frank Ocean is achieving on this enigmatic, unpredictable song.On Blonde, Frank Ocean fearlessly balances avant-garde themes and aesthetics with cathartic pop blissįor a minute there, we thought the day might never come, but on that sunny Saturday afternoon, the second studio album by Frank Ocean was finally out. Instead of trying to parse all of that (and more) in the space of a few paragraphs, it may be better to let the track speak for itself. “Pyramids” has so much going on that it’s overwhelming for a short-form write-up like this: the Michael Jackson lilt in Ocean’s delivery during the early section, the structural metamorphosis from thumping single into a restrained dissolve, its toying with Top 40 lyrical conventions, the extended and evolving titular metaphor, the layers of instrumentation. While all of that is well and good, in the end it’s all beside the point because this track is its own star. He’s written songs for vocalists ranging from Justin Bieber to John Legend, is an associate of the trailblazing Odd Future collective, has thrown down a set at Coachella, and appeared on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne album last year. Remember the first time you heard “Bombs Over Baghdad” and thought, “Whoa–what is this?” That’s how “Pyramids” feels: the unmistakeable sound of boundaries being redefined, of genres being pushed around.įor a twenty-four year old, Frank Ocean already has a ridiculous resumé. Each spin of “Pyramids” moves my thinking more toward the latter option but either way, one can’t help but feel that the sound here is the sound of the future. Kelly or if he’s into something more insidious, exploding those conventions in an undercover operation. Now, many listens later, it’s still difficult to pinpoint whether Ocean is celebrating slow-jam forerunners like R. The first time I listened to Frank Ocean‘s nearly ten-minute suite–the first taste of his upcoming Channel Orange debut LP–I was intrigued the second time, I was sold on its genius. Is “Pyramids” an affirmation of contemporary R&B or a complete refutation of it?
0 kommentar(er)
