Frank Ocean’s Blonde dropped Saturday night on Apple Music. But this is not like most album releases.
It’s not every day that an album release is accompanied by pop-up shops in a handful of cities, where you could pick up the 17-track LP and accompanying publication that includes interviews, short stories and a poem about McDonald’s written by Kanye West. But that aside, the release of Blonde is a pretty big deal.
Fans and the industry had been waiting four years for this moment, which came after numerous rumored and reported release dates passed by without new music. Anticipation about how the avant-garde R&B artist would follow his successful debut had built up.
“I had the time of my life making all of this,” Ocean posted to his Tumblr shortly after the album’s release. “Thank you all. Especially those of you who never let me forget I had to finish. Which is basically every one of y’all. Haha. Love you.”
Ocean’s first major label album, 2012’s Channel Orange, became one of the most critically acclaimed releases that year, earning the new artist six Grammy nominations, including for the top prizes. He took home two.
Washington Post music critic Chris Richards referred to that album, which “exploded the emotional possibilities of contemporary pop music,” as the only masterpiece to emerge from 2012.
“As a singer, songwriter and storyteller, Ocean is every bit as fluid as he is commanding, delivering songs crammed with moods, memories and detailed characters — all sung by a protagonist who’s earned himself a place among the greats,” Richards wrote.
Ocean first came onto the scene as a member of the hip-hop collective Odd Future. His self-released Nostalgia, Ultra became one of 2011’s most acclaimed albums, and he appeared on the Jay-Z and Kanye West project Watch the Throne.
Ocean also became a pop culture icon of sorts when he revealed that his first love was a man, writing about the experience in an open letter after a journalist noted that Ocean addresses a male love interest on Channel Orange.
“Most of the days I’d see him, and his smile. I’d hear his conversation and his silence … until it was time to sleep. Sleep I would often share with him,” Ocean wrote in 2012. “By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant, It was hopeless, There was no escaping, no negotiating with the feeling, no choice. It was my first love, it changed my life.”
The announcement earned Ocean increased attention and prompted a conversation about sexuality within R&B and the hip-hop community.
“Today is a big day for hip-hop,” Russell Simmons wrote of Ocean’s announcement. “It is a day that will define who we really are. How compassionate will we be? How loving can we be?”
Then came the hints that Ocean was busy cooking up new jams. In 2013, he said he was “like 10, 11 songs” into the project.
“It’s another cohesive thing, bordering on a concept record again,” Ocean told the BBC at the time. “At the end of Channel Orange, there’s Golden Girl, and it’s this beach scene. And I kind of want it to extend that feel into the next record all together, kind of make it that theme.”