When he sings, people listen. His ability to phrase words in an emotional yet digestible way and to create imagery using different tones makes him a genius in his own way. His peers have yet to imprint themselves on the souls of young people the way he has, making him unique. His incandescent bravery in not just speaking about his bisexuality but expressing to the world through his music the intricate details of his love is inspirational, and his propensity for ignoring the headlines makes him especially idiosyncratic.
He creates from his soul and his words make their own genre. Instagram Memes Provide Comic Relief. Bangers For the End of the World. What If It Was You? Home About Staff. Close Menu.
RSS Feed. Submit Search. Navigate Left. Navigate Right. And that meant freedom from my situation at the time, and maybe what I was projecting onto my own future. You now have this major platform as an artist and your own cultural power. How do you personally incentivize people to vote or to care? The stakes are high. I still think I have a choice to be optimistic about the possibilities.
Yeah, I have a pool. Doing four laps underwater is hard. I do something every day just to rebel against this nonverbal part of my personality that would have me be unproductive. Every single day it gets me ready for everything that comes after I leave my house. The expectation for artists to be vulnerable and truthful is a lot, you know? Like, in order for me to satisfy expectations, there needs to be an outpouring of my heart or my experiences in a very truthful, vulnerable way.
Like, give me a full motion-picture fantasy. In what is now music industry lore, in you released the Endless visual album to fulfill your contract with your label, Def Jam, and put out Blonde independently the following day. When I worked on my first project, Nostalgia, Ultra , I hardly told anyone. This is just an aside, maybe, but every day I wake up shocked that I do what I do for a living, and at the strangeness of being a figure that is asked questions, and that people want to talk about my thoughts or my anything.
What was it like to work in two different orbits on Endless and Blonde at the same time? When I do look back, I feel like from Channel Orange to Blonde was a big jump for me in terms of not just the way things sounded but the way things looked and were glued together.
When it went according to plan, it felt like a huge relief. I could move however I wanted in the business and also have all my things with me. Why did you decide to release Endless and Blonde one day after the other? So I plan on keeping it that way for a while. Toying with format is interesting right now. And I think the more of that, the better. The idea of being able to have a decent life living off just a thousand fans who are invested in you and will purchase what you make is only possible with ownership of the business.
I like the parts of the process where I work with session musicians or with other record producers or featured artists and guest vocalists. I was writing a lot of verses. I was living in a hotel then, and I had a studio setup somewhere else on the property. I thought, All right, we want the bouncy today thing.
But alongside his emotionally piercing lyrics, lavish sonic architectures, and meticulous production, the year-old New Orleans native has weaved his way through the public eye with astonishing grace and intention — forging ahead in search of artistic purity and freedom in a way that's inextricable from his music.
Ocean said it quickly became clear that his label had no intentions of providing the resources a new artist needs to create a studio debut, let alone find an audience for it. But instead of shrinking or waiting or negotiating, Ocean quietly self-funded and recorded his debut mixtape "Nostalgia, Ultra" so quietly, in fact, that his label didn't realize it had been made by the same Lonny Breaux they'd already signed. He released it online for free in early It was hardly the sensational drop that it would be today, but it became an underground hit.
Most importantly, it was met with enough acclaim to give him leverage with Def Jam. The next five years of Ocean's career have been so heavily and devotedly mythologized that most people know the story by heart.
The lead single from his debut studio album, "Thinkin Bout You," put him on mainstream radars in early Then, days before "Channel Orange" was set to drop , he posted a profoundly moving thank-you note on Tumblr that revealed the album's main source of inspiration: his first love, who was a man.
Much like his lyricism, Ocean's note was a mosaic of feelings and details about a formative experience, devoid of judgments or limitations. Instead of labeling his sexuality in any specific way, he illustrated a dynamic understanding of queer love and our expansive, unpredictable human experience. Looking back, it's difficult to overstate just how groundbreaking and brave this letter was — especially for someone even tangentially related to the hip-hop community, where systemic homophobia runs deep.
Suffice it to say, many so-called "fans" said they'd never listen to "Thinkin Bout You" the same way or at all ever again. But as you know, "Channel Orange" transcended any worries that Ocean would be reduced to "the gay singer. The album was nothing short of a massive success, if not a tectonic shift in the modern musical landscape.
Those young artists that are being hailed this year for "genre-bending," like Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X? Their music wouldn't exist without "Channel Orange.
Then, after a fairly conventional album cycle for a breakthrough artist, complete with late night TV performances and a Grammy win for best urban contemporary album , Ocean dropped out of the public eye. He became more myth than man. When Ocean finally returned four years later, after many teases and false starts , he had figured out a way to finish what he started with "Nostalgia, Ultra.
When he appeared on a mysterious livestream in and began building a staircase , we just cared that he was back with brand new music wafting in the background. It hardly mattered that "Endless" was a visual album with uneventful visuals, or that it was an Apple Music exclusive, or that it was largely instrumental.
We kept watching because we had faith; because everything Ocean touches turns to gold, and we had finally gotten our King Midas back. But in retrospect, for those of us paying attention to Ocean's pattern, it felt like he was warming up. As it turns out, "Endless" was a winking "check" before the "checkmate.
Less than 48 hours later, he released "Blonde" independently under his own label, Boys Don't Cry. Soon after this kerfuffle, Def Jam's parent company Universal announced it would no longer grant exclusives. On top of completing what he called a "seven-year chess game" to control his own music — which included repaying a hefty advance and buying back all his masters recordings — Ocean created his magnum opus. Ocean is the only songwriter credited on gorgeous tracks like "Nikes," "Self Control," "Good Guy," and "Pretty Sweet," which is an anomaly in music's increasingly collaborative landscape.
The three-song stretch of "White Ferrari," "Seigfried," and "Godspeed" is an entire world unto itself, where it's always overcast and the air is extra oxygenated, I imagine.
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