Blonde frank ocean album covert
The song is a woozy, faded, screwed-down odyssey, replete with helium warble and dewy third eye-and it’s actually one of the album’s most propulsive tracks. It’s also the most overtly political statement Frank makes across the entire record.
Even now, four years after the Florida teen was shot and killed with Skittles in his pocket, the line jolts. In the song’s video, Frank holds up a framed photo of the 17-year-old martyr, the boy’s sad eyes tucked inside a hoodie. “RIP Trayvon, that nigga look just like me,” he sings on “ Nikes,” the opening track from Blonde, his wary exhale of a new album. How his voice was allergic to nonsense, how it could shatter a heart into dust.
How he allowed us to escape within his carefully drawn characters while never letting us off the hook. There was a yearning for his perspective-how he could soothe without losing sight of what’s important. The stoic empathy he beamed throughout Channel Orange was missed. Though he posted several elegant messages online, reacting to horrors in Ferguson and Orlando, his relative silence only grew louder as tensions outside continued to rise. How dare you just be excellent?” The Rock quote is from a 2012 profile of the reclusive D’Angelo, who felt compelled to release his first album in 14 years following the shooting of Michael Brown the moment spurred him on.įaced with a hellish loop of police brutality, other musical leaders like Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé came forth with brilliant righteousness as well. “You represent the race, and you have responsibilities that go beyond your art. “Black stardom is rough,” Chris Rock once said. There are precedents for this sort of thing, for disappearances, for the self-implosion of black genius. He could be the dynamic human of the future, exploding age-old binaries with an eloquent note, melting racial divisions with a devastating turn of phrase or quick flit to falsetto. Then he became the story-an avatar for all of our fluid modern ideals. That alone is enough to consider Blond(e)d a triumph, however the hell you spell it.Įxperience the music behind Frank Ocean’s Blonde album covers on iTunes or stream it via Apple Music today.At first, Frank Ocean was simply a great storyteller. He’s more than the voice of a generation at this point he’s the artist that your favorite rappers and musicians are trying to keep up with, even after a four year hiatus. Like so many things about this release, he’s chosen the method of delivery most likely to be indigestible by the giant sorting, tagging and archiving stomach of the internet–while simultaneously making aware of our place in the belly of the beast.īut then again, this is Frank “The Enigma” Ocean we’re talking about. At the same time by releasing multiple spellings with graphics that contradict or vary from the official title used by streaming services, Ocean seems to be intentionally messing with us. There is surely some method to the madness when one considers the way the spelling and typographical choices play off gendered constructions, echoing the projects visual and musical themes…”blond” being masculine, “blonde” being feminine and “blonded” being what all of us are in a post-August 20th, 2016 world. Our guess? the Blond puzzle, seeped in matters of identity, sexuality and non-normative gender roles, is meant to break both the internet and the antiquated lexicon used to describe not just music, but a person’s identity within and without it. Maybe it’s Kanye levels of misdirection, maybe it’s another brilliant ploy to keep us neck-deep in the book and not wonder what Frank Ocean’s got coming next for another four years. After all, why choose one cover when the internet lets you have all the versions you like (and a ‘zine and a film and…and…)īut given the level of artistic care and sheer effort that have gone into the whole complex of creative material released around Blond(e)d we believe there’s something else at work. Now, it’s easy to chalk this up to last-minute alterations in the mad-dash to this massive, multi-layered roll-out, or to dismiss it as artistic indecision.
Three distinctive versions of the album’s cover pop up on the ripped CD, all with their own stylistic take on the album’s name: Blonde, Blond and Blonded.