James Blake’s presence is felt for the first of many times, potentially through influence alone. As filtered through technology as it is, “Nikes” feels deceptively human, Ocean’s voice driving like a nail between eeriness and romance. The only single is album opener “Nikes”, a reverb-filled song that echoes drum pads and distorts vocal melodies. Unlike fellow surprise album artists Rihanna and Kanye West, Ocean isn’t here for radio play. There’s a reason he needed years to create Blonde: The album’s rich with influences and thoughts, and shaving them into a cohesive full-length takes, to say the least, quite some time.
Ocean trades the accessibility of Channel ORANGE’s conventionalism for the accessibility of purified emotion. To return with a record as spacious as Blonde takes confidence, and yet the deeper the album’s explored, the more it seems to be an acceptance of fragility. On Saturday, the 17-track full-length was made available - some in physical CD form for those who grabbed his zine, Boys Don’t Cry, at pop-up stores.
The continuous teasing of a new record, drawn out by overeager fans, made Ocean’s return nerve-wracking, even after a live-stream video came and went, visual album Endless appeared, and a music video dropped. Then again, no one could predict what he would return with, or if he would return at all.Īfter the release of Grammy-winning Channel ORANGE and 2011’s Nostalgia, Ultra, Ocean was flooded with fame, a level of attention he avoided: dodging press, turning down guest verses, deleting his Twitter. No one imagined Frank Ocean would return after four years of silence with an album of minimalist, avant-garde R&B, yet here we are, Blonde in hand.
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