Stand outs: Pink + White, Ivy, Solo, Siegfried What it could mean for you, I don’t know, but I hope you’ll give it a listen. To me, Blonde is happiness and discovery. The songs highlight and narrate relatable highs and lows. In my life, Frank Ocean’s Blonde was the background music to a long car ride down a dark winding road as some friends and I headed to the city with only our voices and the headlights.
#FRANK OCEAN BLONDE ALBUM MEANING FULL#
It’s not so dissimilar to real life, when your heart rushes and rages but also sometimes feels like it’s full of ice. Everything on this album, and particularly this song, is delivered with the confidence of someone just trying to figure it out, stumbling and skinning a knee, and then shrugging it off with cockiness in spite of the sting.īlonde feels a bit like a speeding train towards the middle, rising in both anxiety and passion. The album features guest vocals from Andr 3000, Beyonc, and Kim Burrell, among. It was released on August 20, 2016, as a timed exclusive on the iTunes Store and Apple Music, and followed the August 19 release of Ocean's video album Endless. Self Control is cheekily confident as Ocean boasts, “I’ll be the boyfriend in your wet dreams tonight”, but once again manages to sound vulnerable due to the ambience of the instrumentals. Blonde (alternatively titled blond) is the second a studio album by American singer Frank Ocean. In a more somber setting, we also receive a glimpse into the life of a young adolescent on the receiving end of a mother’s well-meaning but aggressive rhetoric about drug use and similar lifestyle choices in the phone-call sketch track Be Yourself: “This is mom: call me. "I thought that I was dreaming when you said you love me He reminds us that we all eventually grow up, and the ways we learn lessons by tiptoeing through insecurities, bumping into them, getting surprised: Ivy is a wistful and earnest recalling of childhood and the beginnings of a young love story. There's a bull and a matador dueling in the sky
"It's hell on Earth and the city's on fire While I might not have been solo when I first heard it, the song represents a beautiful, bittersweet feeling of loneliness and desperation: I remember my heart growing bigger than the sky as I made out with my second sort-of-boyfriend in his messy college room to Ocean’s blossoming run here. Ocean gives a spiritual performance as he moves from low to high, microcosmic to macrocosmic, and sings about the constellations. Here, cussing is juxtaposed with a gentle organ, a surprising addition to a rap album, and small, sharp whistling accents. The track called Solo has remained a transcendent experience for me every time I hear it. It’s simple and clean and gives Ocean the space to play with this sparseness for the album’s remainder. Frank Ocean balances the past, the future, and the gratitude for both good and bad experiences.īlonde has a vulnerable start with a sparse tone, only a lone guitar populating the background. Listening to it now, having just graduated from college and stumbling into young adulthood with one foot in the nostalgic mire, it well encapsulates the transition into what? for a twenty-something like me. Blonde is lengthy but well worth your time as the perfect album for late nights and languid mornings.
#FRANK OCEAN BLONDE ALBUM MEANING SERIES#
I believe that what makes the album so special is that its rap can be best summarized as sentimental, which is sometimes a rarity for the genre. the appearance of the title written in french (blond) on the cover, resulted in a great intrigue by various fans, having led to a series of interpretations (although never validated by ocean). This review will instead detail the ways in which Blonde taps into the uncertain and poignant emotions of youth. Don’t be surprised if there’s another long hiatus in the offing for Ocean, because Blonde is the kind of overflowing musical statement from which an artist needs time to recharge and for which an audience needs years to properly appreciate.Considering that Frank Ocean’s Blonde album has been out for a couple of years now, there are plenty of articles dissecting its meaning and form. This is music that fascinates on first listen but requires multiple spins for its complexities and idiosyncrasies to take hold. There might not be single songs that jump out as effortlessly as “Thinkin Bout You” and “Super Rich Kids” did from Channel Orange, but Blonde is a richer listening experience in totality.
It’s probably no coincidence that Ocean mentions “warm jets” on “Close To You,” because Blonde has the alluring ambience of Brian Eno’s production work. The musical backing is mostly spare, a slow-motion beat here, a watery organ there. Ocean’s voice is always front and center, even when it’s altered into chipmunk tones (“Nikes”) or multi-tracked into fetching harmonies (“White Ferrari.”) Ocean also flips from deadpan rapping to old-school soul emoting with nary an awkward transition. For all of the big-name producers, there is a commonality of approach on the album.
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