In August of 2016 Frank Ocean dropped 2 albums, endless and blonde- Endless was originally a live streamed video around 45 minutes long which depicts Ocean building a staircase while the albums tracks play.
Endless was relatively experimental, a moody album with dreamy aspects, something he made when he was in his feelings, raw and emotional and all the songs work. The album was good, really good.
We have come to understand that Endless was in fact a ploy for Ocean to get out of his with Def Jam Records. Ocean felt mistreated at Def Jam, like he was sidelined when he felt his talents should be treated with more weight. He wanted a new chapter but had to finish his contract before he could start that. Endless was released properly on the 19th of August and with some convincing, it was released exclusively on Apple Music and with that Ocean had completed his contact and was free.
Many fans thought Ocean was done. It had been 4 years since his debut album ‘Channel Orange’ and most thought it’d be another couple of years before his third but strangely, the very next day, Ocean released ‘Blonde’ under his own label, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’. This caught everyone of guard, no one knew about this album- not even some of the people featured. Another group that was caught off guard by this was Def Jam Records, not only had Ocean probably been using studio sessions for purposes other than Endless but this surprise also cost them the insane amount of $20,000,000.
‘Blonde’ has many aspects ranging from a hopeless love ballad to the mourning of a lost relationship. This ensemble proves to make Blonde a pretty stunning album.
My favourite part of ‘Blonde’ is in the song ‘Nights’, although an amazing song, Nights offers something more. Exactly 3 minutes and 30 seconds into the song a beat switch happens, this beat switch also happens exactly 30 minutes into the 1 hour runtime of the album. It’s more than a beat switch, it represents a mood switch, the tone of the album switching from a rather upbeat portrayal of someone falling in love to a tranquil and quieter mood showing the loss of that love and the mourning of it from then on.
This mood switch is best portrayed in ‘Facebook Story’, an interlude of sorts that tells the story of a producer, SebastiAn. The producer speaks of when a girl broke up with him because he wouldn’t accept her on Facebook. This story shows the ignorance of both sides in the relationship, possibly detailing how Ocean felt in the relationship ‘Blonde’ is about.
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