“Be Yourself”: Frank Ocean's Blonde and Hip-Hop

“Be Yourself”: Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Hip-Hop

Benjamin Heffernan

Western University

Recommended Citation

Heffernan, Benjamin. “‘Be Yourself’: Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Hip-Hop.” Nota Bene:

Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Musicology 15, no. 1 (2022): 51-73.

https://doi.org/10.5206/notabene.v15i1.15032.

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“Be Yourself”: Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Hip-Hop

Abstract:

Upon the release of Frank Ocean’s 2016 album, Blonde, its minimalist yet textured musical

aesthetic saw critics compare the album to works by rock auteurs such as Brian Wilson and Brian

Eno. However, Blonde, while not necessarily a hip-hop album, makes extensive reference to hip-

hop in both its musical and lyrical content as well as its extra-musical implications. This essay

argues that Blonde’s various connections to a “hip-hop tradition” are more important to

understanding the album’s identity than any comparison to a rock-influenced musical aesthetic.

This essay defines a “hip-hop tradition” as determined by factors other than the musical aesthetic

of the released album, which include the album’s cultural standing, the intention behind the

creation, composition or release of the work, the style of lyricism, and the artist’s history and

identity: in Blonde’s case, all these factors remain largely indebted to hip-hop conventions. This

type of consideration represents a more holistic method of assessing the core identity of a

musical work as opposed to solely relying on sonic or commercial considerations. This paper

next examines Blonde’s various connections to a “hip-hop tradition” through a study of Ocean’s

own personal and musical history, Ocean’s rebellion against the neocolonial establishment of the

music industry, his highly collaborative creative process, and the album’s hip-hop-influenced

lyrical content.

Keywords

Frank Ocean, Blonde, hip-hop tradition, hip-hop convention, neocolonial, music industry,

holistic assessment

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“Be Yourself”: Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Hip-Hop

Benjamin Heffernan

Year 3 - Western University

After the 2012 release of his debut full-length album, Channel Orange, and a number of

tour dates, festival performances, and promotional appearances throughout 2013 and early 2014,

Frank Ocean vanished. Fans knew a second album was coming, as Ocean had discussed the

influence of The Beatles and The Beach Boys on his next album at the 2013 Time 100 Gala,1

cancelled a Coachella appearance in 2014 to “stay in the groove and finish this b*tch,” and

announced that the anticipated album would be titled Boys Don’t Cry in a 2015 Tumblr post.2

Four years after the release of Channel Orange, Ocean finally re-emerged on August 1st, 2016

with the launch of a website titled boysdontcry.co. The website cryptically displayed a video

1 Nadeska Alexis, “Frank Ocean Bingeing on Beatles, Beach Boys for next Album,” MTV

News, April 25, 2013, http://www.mtv.com/news/1706323/frank-ocean-new-album-

inspiration-beatles/. 2 Sheldon Pearce, “Frank Ocean's Boys Don't Cry: The Complete Timeline,” Pitchfork,

August 2, 2016, https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1255-frank-oceans-boys-dont-cry-the-

complete-timeline/.

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loop of Ocean building a staircase.3 The video, which was underscored by various instrumentals,

played continuously for several weeks before Apple Music began streaming a 45-minute visual

album entitled Endless on August 19th.4 The release of Endless represented the fulfillment of

Ocean’s contract with Def Jam Recordings, which Ocean immediately took advantage of by

independently releasing a second album, Blonde, a day later on August 20th, 2016.5 Whereas

Endless was perceived as a minor, “arty” statement, occasionally obfuscated by the brevity of the

songs and the large amounts of reverb placed over the tracks (which was used to manipulate the

album to sound as though it was being played from within the room that Ocean was earlier seen

building the staircase), Blonde was lauded by critics and fans alike: Apple Music described it as

“an album we’ll be listening to and talking about for years”6 on the day of its release, while The

Guardian called it a “baffling and brilliant […] triumph” in a rave five-star review.7 In a

discussion with writer Ann Powers that was published by National Public Radio (NPR) two days

after Blonde’s release, writer and scholar Jason King described Ocean’s “continued evocation of

drug use” and “lyrical use of invectives” on Blonde as connected to a “PMRC sticker hip-hop

tradition,”8 as opposed to a “sensual, retro R&B one,” a major characteristic of Ocean’s previous

3 Joe Coscarelli, “Frank Ocean Releases a Visual Album, with More to Come,” The New

York Times, August 19, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/arts/music/frank-ocean-

endless-visual-album.html. 4 Ibid. 5 Jon Caramanica, “Frank Ocean Ends His Long Silence with a Variety of Works,” The New

York Times, August 21, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/arts/music/frank-ocean-

blonde-endless-review.html. 6 “Blonde by Frank Ocean,” Apple Music (Apple, August 20, 2016),

https://music.apple.com/us/album/blonde/1146195596 7 Tim Jonze, “Frank Ocean: Blonde Review – a Baffling and Brilliant Five-Star Triumph,”

The Guardian, August 25, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/aug/25/frank-

ocean-blonde-review-a-baffling-and-brilliant-five-star-triumph. 8 PMRC refers to the Parents Music Resource Center, a lobby group founded in 1985 who

objected to the use of explicit language and mature themes in popular music. While the

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album Channel Orange.9 While King associates Blonde with a “PMRC sticker hip-hop tradition”

by virtue of its invective-filled, occasionally vulgar lyrical content, this essay will examine a

broader conceptualization of what constitutes a “hip hop tradition,” arguing that despite it not

necessarily being definable as a hip-hop album by virtue of its musical aesthetic, Blonde’s

creation and release are deeply rooted within a "hip-hop tradition.”10

It is important to first distinguish between “a hip-hop tradition” and a “hip-hop album”.

The “hip-hop tradition” I am referring to is largely determined by factors other than the musical

aesthetic of the released album; these factors can include the album’s cultural standing, the

intention behind its creation, the composition of the work, the style of lyricism, and the artist’s

own history and identity. On a broader level, I assert that this type of consideration is relevant to

an assessment of any musical work, as it centres the conversation on an artist’s identity and how

that translates into their artistic expression as opposed to genre-based considerations which can

focus on where a work is situated within a commercial landscape. In Blonde’s case, many of the

factors listed above remain largely indebted to hip-hop conventions. For example, despite the

impressionistic nature of many of the album’s lyrics, Blonde employs a rather colloquial, hip-hop

influenced lyrical style, with opening track “Nikes” and closing track “Futura Free” perhaps best

PMRC originally targeted rock music, their efforts have also affected hip-hop artists (Claude

Chastagner, “The Parents’ Music Resource Center: From Information to Censorship”,

Popular Music 18, no. 2 (1999), 181. http://www.jstor.org/stable/853600.). 9 Jason King and Ann Powers, “Detangling Frank Ocean's 'Blonde': What It Is and Isn't,”

NPR, August 22, 2016,

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/08/22/490918270/detangling-frank-oceans-

blonde-what-it-is-and-isnt. 10 King and Powers, “Detangling Frank Ocean's 'Blonde'”.

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epitomizing the vulgarity Jason King refers to when linking Blonde to a“ PMRC sticker hip-hop

tradition.”11

Ocean’s creative process in writing and recording Blonde was also more indebted to hip-

hop artists such as Kanye West than, for example, Brian Eno or Brian Wilson, whom the album’s

musical aesthetic may more closely recall. John Brackett describes Blonde as a “headphone

album that recalls the musical aesthetic of boundary-pushing rock musicians from the late 1960s

and 1970s,”12 with the album itself drawing further critical comparisons to Radiohead, Big Star,

and U2.13 Although I largely agree with these assessments, it is important to consider the manner

in which Ocean evokes this musical aesthetic. Blonde recalls “boundary-pushing rock musicians”

in its reliance on texture over groove, the width of its musical and thematic scope, and its

unconventional song structures, particularly in comparison to hip-hop, which often emphasizes

musical repetition.14 However, Blonde simultaneously distances itself from this aesthetic in both

its vocal delivery, which includes rapped, spoken, and heavily affected styles over the course of

the album, and its lyricism, which is firmly rooted in hip-hop convention as well as Black culture

and experience. As a result, I argue that any sort of attempt to neatly categorize Blonde is likely

to fall short of capturing the entire scope of the album, and therefore, a more holistic view of its

musical identity is necessary to fully grasp the album and its cultural standing.

11 King and Powers, “Detangling Frank Ocean's 'Blonde'”. 12 John Brackett, “Weed Crumbles into Glitter: Representing a Marijuana High in Frank

Ocean’s Blonde,” in The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding

Approaches, ed. John Brackett, Ciro Scotto, and Kenneth Smith, 2018, 300,

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315544700-21. 13 King and Powers, “Detangling Frank Ocean's 'Blonde'”. 14 Brackett, “Weed Crumbles into Glitter”, 300.

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In considering Blonde’s connection to hip-hop, it is important to first consider Ocean’s

personal and musical history. Ocean’s debut mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra, was released

independently in 2011 to widespread acclaim. This most notably led to a collaboration with

Kanye West and Jay-Z on their album Watch the Throne, which saw Ocean perform guest vocals

on “No Church in the Wild” and “Made in America” respectively.15 These affiliations and

collaborations with rappers, which also included his involvement in hip-hop collective Odd

Future, established Ocean as an emerging name in the hip-hop world despite being mostly

known for his singing. Shortly before the release of his debut album Channel Orange in 2012,

Ocean posted a letter to his Tumblr which revealed that his first love had been a man.16 Ocean’s

connection to hip-hop at the time led to journalists contending with his presumed queer identity

as it related to hip-hop history and hip-hop culture, with blog Holy Moly! even describing Ocean

as “the first gay rapper in history.”17 Although this description is factually incorrect, The New

Statesman’s Dorian Lynskey’s description of Ocean as “the first out gay star in urban music” is

perhaps more accurate.18 Lynskey describes Ocean’s openness of his sexuality as “courageous,”

citing the historical implications of being openly gay in the music industry (“openly gay

musicians rarely fare well in the US”), with the mainstream hip-hop/R&B world especially being

15 Kanye West and Jay-Z, Watch the Throne, Roc-A-Fella Records, 2011. 16 frankocean. “Whoever you are, wherever you are…,” Tumblr, July 4, 2012,

https://frankocean.tumblr.com/post/26473798723. 17 Ann Powers, “A Close Look at Frank Ocean's Coming Out Letter,” NPR, July 5, 2012,

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2012/07/04/156261612/a-close-look-at-frank-oceans-

coming-out-letter. 18 Dorian Lynskey, “Frank Ocean Comes Out: A Brave Move in the Exaggeratedly

Heterosexual World of Hip Hop,” The New Statesman, July 4, 2012,

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2012/07/frank-ocean-comes-out-brave-move-

exaggeratedly-heterosexual-world-hip-hop.

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“uncharted territory” for queer artists.19 However, Lynskey’s concerns ultimately proved to be

largely unfounded, as Channel Orange did indeed “fare well”: it debuted at number two on the

Billboard 200, received an Album of the Year nomination at the 2013 Grammy Awards where

Ocean also performed, and has since become one of the most enduring albums of the 2010s.20

This success meant that Ocean occupied a unique position: he had become a critically and

commercially successful Black queer pop artist whose coming out had been described as a “glass

ceiling moment for Black music” by The Los Angeles Times’ Gerrick D. Kennedy.21

Simultaneously, Ocean’s label, Def Jam Recordings, seemingly appeared to have given Ocean

carte blanche to record the successor to Channel Orange. Just as he had done for Channel

Orange, Ocean knew how to respond: subvert all expectations.

When discussing many other albums, an exploration of their cultural connections to a

genre-based tradition would not typically begin with an exploration of their release processes;

however, the manner in which Frank Ocean released Blonde is crucial to understanding the

statement he attempts to make with the album. While surprise releases have become a trend over

the past decade (Radiohead’s In Rainbows, Beyonce’s Beyonce, and U2’s Songs of Innocence are

some of the more notable examples),22 these did not come packed with the same extra-musical

implications that applied to Blonde. While the decisions to release In Rainbows, Beyonce, and

19 Lynskey, “Frank Ocean Comes Out”. 20 Keith Caulfield, “Zac Brown Band, Frank Ocean Debut at Nos. 1 & 2 on Billboard 200,”

Billboard, January 13, 2013, https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/zac-brown-band-

frank-ocean-debut-at-nos-1-2-on-billboard-200-481282/. 21 Gerrick D. Kennedy, “Frank Ocean's Talent and Sexuality Could Push Musical

Boundaries,” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2012,

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-xpm-2012-jul-04-la-et-ms-frank-ocean-

sexuality-music-20120704-story.html. 22 Rachel Finn, “Out of the Blue: A Brief History of the Surprise Album,” DIY, March 25,

2019, https://diymag.com/2019/03/25/brief-history-of-surprise-albums.

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Songs of Innocence without advance notice were likely rooted in what the artists saw as a novel

and innovative marketing strategy, scholar Benjamin Lewellyn-Taylor argues that Ocean’s

surprise release and, by extension, his exit from Def Jam Recordings, represented a form of

“rebellion against the neocolonial economy perpetuated by the music industry’s White

control.”23 While Def Jam was co-founded by a Black man and has been led by a large number

of Black presidents and executives since its inception in 1984, Lewellyn-Taylor describes this as

“misleading,” as it still exists as part of a chain of larger, White-owned conglomerate

corporations.24 Def Jam is also directly parented by Universal Music Group, whom Lewellyn-

Taylor sees as participatory in a “neocolonial system that suggests Black artists remain in a

secondary position of control.”25

The core of Lewellyn-Taylor’s writing appears to have been inspired by a Tumblr post

that Ocean published in February 2017, in which he revealed that he had declined an invitation to

participate in a Grammy tribute to Prince as Ocean believed that the fact that he saw himself as

“young, Black, gifted, and independent” was the “best tribute to [Prince’s] legacy.”26 Ocean then

cited Blonde selling over one million copies without a record label and the fact that he had

“bought all [his] masters back” in 2016 to suggest that he should be able to determine his own

definition of success without relying on the Recording Academy to validate his work.27 This is

significant, as it concretely reveals that Ocean’s decision to leave Def Jam was based on more

than a simple falling out or a dislike of the label’s practices; Ocean made, and continues to make,

23 Benjamin Lewellyn-Taylor, “The Free Black Artist: Frank Ocean through a Decolonial

Lens,” Black Theology 17, no. 1 (June 2018): 61. 24 Lewellyn-Taylor, “The Free Black Artist”, 54. 25 Ibid. 26 frankocean, “Ok Ken (and David)”. 27 Ocean opted not to submit Endless or Blonde for 2017 Grammy consideration.

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a conscious decision to “rebel” against the mainstream music industry, to paraphrase Lewellyn-

Taylor.28 The New York Times’ 2016 profile of Ocean suggests that his rebellion, which Ocean

describes as a “seven-year chess game” to buy himself out of his record deal and buy back all of

his master recordings,29 began in earnest in 2011 when Def Jam tried to sign Ocean after the

success of his debut mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra. However, Def Jam soon realized that they had

already signed Ocean (and had effectively shelved him) under the name Lonny Breaux in 2009.30

While this history suggests that Ocean’s Blonde-era rebellion against establishment music

industry structures did not happen in a vacuum, his desire for musical, financial, and cultural

independence has arguably become the single most distinctive feature of his post-2016 public

persona; Ocean has only pursued a very select group of musical and business-related projects

since the release of Blonde and has shrouded his public persona in further ambiguity.

In Rhythm and Business: The Political Economy of Black Music, author, critic, and

theorist Yvonne Bynoe describes the “two recurring, intertwining dialogues” that define hip-hop

culture.31 Bynoe defines the first of these “dialogues” as “the financial control that is wielded by

White-run entities in a genre that creatively remains beholden to Black Americans,” while she

defines the second as concerned with “whom the music actually represents,” which is largely

Black youth, despite being “chiefly marketed to White audiences around the globe.”32 This

28 Lewellyn-Taylor, “The Free Black Artist”, 56. 29 Jon Caramanica, “Frank Ocean Is Finally Free, Mystery Intact,” The New York Times,

November 16, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/arts/music/frank-ocean-blonde-

interview.html. 30 Caramanica, “Frank Ocean Is Finally Free, Mystery Intact”. 31 Yvonne Bynoe, “Money, Power, and Respect: A Critique of the Business of Rap Music,”

in Rhythm and Business: The Political Economy of Black Music, edited by Norman Kelley

(New York, NY: Akashic, 2002), 221. 32 Bynoe, “Money, Power, and Respect”, 221.

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duality suggests a disconnect between hip-hop’s aspirations and its modern reality: the hip-hop

industry is largely controlled by White-owned corporations, which is a far cry from the genre’s

community-based roots in the Bronx and the first hip-hop records being released by independent

Black-owned labels.33 Bynoe concludes that the “only way that Black Americans can control

their images and cultural products is to become entrenched in the ownership class of the music

industry”; this suggests that, by breaking free from his contract with Def Jam Recordings, Ocean

now exists outside of the aforementioned “dialogues” that Bynoe believes define hip-hop culture,

as Ocean has eliminated any discrepancy between who controls his music and to whom his

music appeals.34

Within hip-hop, resistance against the hegemony of major labels over the record industry

has become somewhat of a trend in recent years. Lil Uzi Vert’s 2019 protest song against

Atlantic Records, titled “Free Uzi”,35 the success of Lil Wayne’s years-long missing royalties

lawsuit against Cash Money Records, a subsidiary of Republic Records/Universal Music

Group,36 and Chance the Rapper’s decision to remain independent from any label all serve as

examples of Black hip-hop artists questioning the inherent contradiction of White-controlled

conglomerates controlling and profiting from a Black-originated genre.37 Ocean’s rebellion

33 Bynoe, “Money, Power, and Respect”, 226. 34 Bynoe, “Money, Power, and Respect”, 233. 35 Charles Holmes, “Lil Uzi Vert Self-Releases New Song Amid Label Trouble,” Rolling

Stone, March 29, 2019, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lil-uzi-vert-free-uzi-

814835/. 36 Nerisha Penrose, “Lil Wayne Reaches Settlement in Lawsuit against Cash Money,”

Billboard, June 7, 2018, https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/lil-wayne-wins-lawsuit-

cash-money-birdman-8459879/. 37 Jacob Shamsian, “A 23-Year-Old Rapper Who Refuses to Sign a Record Deal Just Made

Grammy History,” The Independent (Independent Digital News and Media, February 13,

2017), https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/chance-the-rapper-grammys-record-deal-

a7578031.html.

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perhaps bears the greatest similarity to the dispute between Prince and Warner Brothers Records

in the mid-1990s over artistic and financial control, which led to Prince—who like Ocean, was

not necessarily a hip-hop artist but was a radical, enigmatic Black auteur who interacted with

hip-hop convention in a similar way—changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol and

writing the word “slave” on his face for public appearances.38 Ocean’s assumption of complete

control over his own music and image’s “ownership class” also recalls hip-hop scholar Tricia

Rose’s assertion that hip-hop artists are constantly "destabilizing hegemonic discourses and

attempting to legitimize counter hegemonic interpretations” in a “war of position” where hip-hop

artists, and by extension, Black Americans, are battling for the “retention, establishment, or

legitimation of real social power.”39 For a person like Ocean, who seems to be motivated by a

desire for self-determination, his post-2016 independence from the constraints of the established

music industry likely represents his self-defined version of Rose’s “social power.”40

This “social power” also provides Ocean with the flexibility to dictate which elements of

the White-controlled music industry he engages with and on what terms. This is exemplified by

the deal he signed in 2016 to release Blonde as an Apple Music exclusive, which has since led to

his recurring “blonded RADIO” series being hosted through Apple Music’s radio service.41 In

the 2017 Tumblr post about his decision to withhold Endless and Blonde from Grammy

38 Eamonn Forde, “Record Breaker: A Brief History of Prince's Contractual Controversies,”

The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, August 10, 2015),

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/10/history-prince-contractual-controversy-

warner-paisley-park. 39 Tricia Rose, “Prophets of Rage: Rap Music and the Politics of Black Cultural Expression,”

in Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Cultural Resistance in Contemporary American

Popular Culture (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), 102. 40 Rose, “Prophets of Rage”, 102. 41"blonded RADIO on Apple Music,” Apple Music (Apple), accessed December 15, 2021,

https://music.apple.com/ca/curator/blonded-radio/1082541771.

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consideration, discussed above, Ocean also suggested that he still remained open to working with

the Grammy Awards again in the future - provided they addressed the “cultural bias” and

“general nerve damage” he noted as problems.42 Jason King’s 2016 discussion with Ann Powers

following the release of Blonde also included critiques concerning Ocean’s lack of directness in

tackling contemporary questions of queer politics or Black liberation politics, particularly in the

wake of the 2016 Black Lives Matter protests and the mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in

Orlando, Florida, in the same year.43 In considering King’s comments, it is important to

distinguish between Blonde as a text and Blonde as a statement. With regards to Blonde as a text,

I would somewhat agree with King, as Ocean largely avoids commenting on contemporary

politics or social issues throughout the album, save for one mention of the murder of Trayvon

Martin in “Nikes” (“RIP Trayvon, that n***a look just like me”).44 However, I would argue that

the method in which Blonde was released is deeply rooted in Black liberation politics, as it has

led to Ocean owning his own label (Blonded), funding his own artistic ventures, and achieving

near-complete liberation from the White-controlled music industry.

After winning his first ever Grammy Award in the Best Rap Album category in 2020,

Ocean’s collaborator and close friend Tyler, the Creator criticized the Recording Academy for its

categorization of his own 2019 album IGOR, saying: “It sucks that whenever we — and I mean

guys that look like me — do anything that's genre-bending, they always put it in a rap or urban

category. I don't like that 'urban' word — it's just a politically correct way to say the n-word to

42 frankocean, “Ok Ken (and David)”. 43 King and Powers, “Detangling Frank Ocean's 'Blonde'”. 44 King and Powers, “Detangling Frank Ocean's 'Blonde'”.

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me.”45 While Blonde and IGOR are very different albums, they are similar in their disregard for

the classically “urban” musical aesthetics with which Tyler, the Creator and Ocean had

previously become associated. However, Ocean did not submit Blonde for Grammy

consideration, perhaps given the fact that Channel Orange had won Best Urban Contemporary

Album in 2013 and potentially because of Recording Academy’s recent history of overlooking

acclaimed albums by Black artists.46 While this in itself is an act of rebellion against the White-

controlled music industry, it also allows Blonde to avoid categorization by the Recording

Academy, and by extension, the mainstream music industry. I would argue that this decision has

had further-reaching effects on the album’s legacy, as it has rendered it impossible for the

Grammy Awards’ view of the album to be factored into any consideration of the album’s merit

or for listeners to base their view of the album’s genre on the Grammys’ categorization. If Ocean

did in fact consider these factors in his decision, it further suggests his pursuit of near-complete

singularity, both as an artist and for Blonde as an album, which in itself subverts all preconceived

notions of Ocean belonging to one particular genre.

Ocean’s pursuit of singularity also manifested in his choice to assume a “curatorial” role

throughout the creation of this deeply personal album, which recalls the creative process of hip-

hop auteur Kanye West. While recording his 2010 album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,

West invited a “dream team” of rappers, songwriters and producers to work on the album at

45 Toyin Owoseje, “Tyler, the Creator Slams Grammys' 'Urban' Category as a Politically

Correct Version of the N-Word,” CNN, January 27, 2020,

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/27/entertainment/tyler-the-creator-grammys-intl-

scli/index.html. 46 Ocean publicly criticized the Recording Academy’s decision to award Taylor Swift’s 1989

with Album of the Year instead of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly.

(Frank Ocean, “Ok Ken [and David]”.)

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Avex Studios in Honolulu, Hawaii, where they often worked around the clock in pursuit of

West’s vision for the album.47 This meant that the finished My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

featured a large number of collaborators, both with respect to the number of featured artists

(“features”) on the album and the number of producers who contributed to the album. This type

of process has become commonplace throughout hip-hop, where the curation of features—or, in

the case of artists such as J. Cole and Future, the decision to record albums without features—has

actually become a key part of the songwriting process.48 This practice is made possible by the

genre’s reliance on harmonically and rhythmically repetitive song structures, which allow artists

such as West to record multiple artists performing over the same section and then choosing

which performances to include.

While its song structures are not quite as malleable, Blonde adheres to this element of

hip-hop convention in a more subtle, nuanced manner. The credits in Boys Don’t Cry, the “zine”

that accompanied the release of Blonde, list a substantial number of artists who contributed to the

album, ranging from features (e.g. Andre-3000 on “Solo (Reprise)”, Beyonce’s backing vocals

on “Pink + White”, and Kim Burrell on “Godspeed”), to less prominent contributions to the

album’s production (e.g. Jonny Greenwood’s string arrangements on “Seigfried”, Jon Brion’s

production on three tracks, and Rostam Batmanglij’s work on “Ivy”), to seemingly inaudible

contributions (e.g. Kendrick Lamar’s contribution to “Skyline To”).49 This perhaps highlights the

difference between West and Ocean in their approaches to curation: whereas West sometimes

47 Noah Callahan-Bever, “Project Runaway,” Complex, November 22, 2010,

https://www.complex.com/music/kanye-west-interview-2010-cover-story. 48 Tony M. Centeno, “20 Hip-Hop and R&B Albums That Went Platinum with No Features,”

VIBE, January 2, 2019, https://www.vibe.com/gallery/platinum-hip-hop-rnb-albums-

mixtapes-with-no-features/future-future-album-cover-1545267621/. 49 Frank Ocean, ed., Boys Don't Cry (Chicago, IL: McGruder Publishing, 2016).

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allows featured artists’ performances to take up the majority of a song’s running time, trusting

that his audience understands the role he plays in the production of the album and the curation of

features, Blonde’s focus on autobiography and pared-back arrangements means that Ocean uses

his large number of collaborators much more sparingly. This minimalist instinct saw Ocean

delete both a rapped Kendrick Lamar verse on “Nights” and a Kanye West outro on “White

Ferrari”, with West’s unused lyrics being included as a poem in the accompanying zine, Boys

Don’t Cry.50 Instead of having a large number of “features” on the album, Ocean often relies on

various effect-laden versions of his own voice which he uses to suggest "different versions of

[him]” existing within each song, a concept which Ocean discussed in a 2016 interview with The

New York Times.51

In a similar 2016 interview with Pitchfork, Buddy Ross, who played keyboards on

various Blonde tracks, describes how Ocean had “this vision that no one else [was] really privy

to” and how he would “put blinds on everybody and [send] them off in their own space to just do

whatever they want.”52 Ross then mentions how he had no idea what music (which he describes

as “bits and pieces”) would be released or what form it would take, likening Ocean to “a collage

artist” as Ross and the album’s other collaborators “[would] never see [Ocean] putting [the bits

and pieces] together.”53 French producer SebastiAn, whose voice is notably featured on Ocean’s

track “Facebook Story,” furthers Ross’ descriptions of the process of creating Blonde, recalling

how Ocean had “guys from everywhere, with no mental or technical restrictions” involved in the

50 Ocean, Boys Don’t Cry. 51 Caramanica, “Frank Ocean Is Finally Free”. 52 Marc Hogan, “Frank Ocean's Keyboardist Talks Making of New Albums Blonde and

Endless,” Pitchfork, August 31, 2016, https://pitchfork.com/news/67933-frank-oceans-

keyboardist-explains-the-making-of-new-albums-blonde-and-endless/. 53 Hogan, “Frank Ocean's Keyboardist Talks”.

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studio, contributing in any way he deemed suitable.54 SebastiAn even reveals that Ocean “never

told [him]” about his voice being recorded and featured on “Facebook Story”, which perhaps

serves as an extreme example of Ross’ claim that most of the album’s collaborators had no idea

what would be featured on the album before its August 2016 release.55 Both SebastiAn and Ross’

comments suggest that Ocean’s role as curator also included the curation of a patient,

unrestrained creative environment that was driven by his own admission that he did not “know

what combination of [chords and melodies] was gonna make [him] feel how [he] needed to feel,”

but that he knew “precisely the feeling that need[ed] to happen,” and presumably what “feeling”

he wanted each of the albums to invoke.56 Ocean then expanded on his vision for Blonde,

describing how he sought to replicate the manner in which humans process memory in a “non-

linear” method where stories are not sequentially retold inside of one’s head but instead seen “in

flashes overlaid.”57 This, along with the aforementioned description of Ocean’s use of “different

voices” to suggest “different versions of [him]” existing within the same song, provides a great

deal of insight into Ocean’s reasoning for the use of a modular musical structure throughout

Blonde and his goals during the album’s editing process. Ocean has chosen to present the album

as an autobiographical series of musical and lyrical vignettes, or “flashes overlaid,”58 and his use

54 Guillaume Narduzzi, “On a Discuté Avec Sebastian, De Son Grand Retour à Frank

Ocean,” trans. Ben Heffernan, Konbini (Konbini, May 21, 2019),

https://www.konbini.com/fr/musique/grand-retour-sebastian-a-donne-quelques-nouvelles/. 55 Guillaume Narduzzi, “On a Discuté Avec Sebastian, De Son Grand Retour à Frank

Ocean,” Konbini, May 21, 2019, https://www.konbini.com/fr/musique/grand-retour-sebastian-

a-donne-quelques-nouvelles/. 56 Caramanica, “Frank Ocean Is Finally Free”. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid.

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of a hip-hop influenced, heavily curatorial creative process in the production of Blonde plays a

major role in the album’s cohesion as an autobiographical unit.

Ocean’s lyrics on Blonde represent another way in which the album is connected to a hip-

hop tradition, which is audible from the first lines of the album’s opening track, “Nikes", where a

pitched-up version of Ocean sings: “These b*tches want Nikes, they looking for a check, tell ‘em

it ain’t likely / Said she need a ring like Carmelo, must be on that white like Othello.”59 Ocean

invokes several of modern hip-hop’s most commonly used tropes in his references to drug use

(“on that white”), women as “b*tches”, Nike sneakers, and NBA star Carmelo Anthony.60 While

I would suggest that “Nikes” is generally one of the album’s more hip-hop influenced tracks as a

result of its colloquial lyrical style, Ocean’s occasionally rapped vocal performance, and its drum

programming, Ocean continues this lyrical trend through songs which are not necessarily as

musically influenced by hip-hop. One such example is “Solo”, which begins its second verse

with the quickly-sung lines: “I’m skipping showers and switching socks, sleeping good and long

/ Bones feeling dense as fuck, wish a n***a would cross / And catch a solo, on time.”61 The

lines, “I’ma stick around, I’m gon' let my nuts hang / N***a, you got some just like me, don't

you? / Or maybe not just like me, you know I'm Africano Americano,”62 taken from the album’s

closing track, “Futura Free”, perhaps best epitomize Jason King’s aforementioned description of

Blonde as “connected to a PMRC sticker hip-hop tradition,” due to Ocean’s description of his

genitalia and his blatant use of the “n-word”.63 Despite largely being sung, I would argue that

many of the lyrics on Blonde are indebted to hip-hop culture, particularly due to Ocean’s reliance

59 Frank Ocean,“Nikes”, track 1 Blonde, Blonded, 2016. 60 Ocean, “Nikes”. 61 Frank Ocean, “Solo,” track 4 on Blonde, Blonded, 2016. 62 Frank Ocean, “Futura Free”, track 17 on Blonde, Blonded, 2016. 63 King and Powers, “Detangling Frank Ocean's 'Blonde': What It Is and Isn't”.

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on a colloquial lyrical style that regularly features terms borrowed from Black American

vernacular that Ocean may have heard in his youth in New Orleans. A byproduct of Ocean’s use

of this style of lyricism is that it further roots the album as uniquely Black American, an

inextricable part of the experiences and stories he recounts throughout the album.

While it is difficult to categorize Blonde as belonging to one particular musical genre, I

believe that an exploration of how Ocean created and released the album, his lyrics, and the

album’s identity and politics suggest that Blonde emerged from within a “hip-hop tradition,”

which is distinct from its musical aesthetic. I believe this is an important consideration in

assessing an album and/or an artist, as strictly genre-based characterizations can either be rooted

in non-musical factors such as race, gender, etc. or overly concerned with period-specific

musical influences (e.g. Blonde’s musical aesthetic being heavily influenced by The Beatles,

whereas Ocean’s greater reliance on groove on Channel Orange more closely aligned him with

R&B artists such as Stevie Wonder). Adversely, this method of assessing a musical work

considers broader questions about which musical, social, and cultural influences are inextricable

from an artist’s identity and history, and how this group of core influences informs an artist as

they explore different musical textures and aesthetics. In the case of Blonde, I believe that

Ocean’s evocation of a hip-hop tradition is arguably the album’s defining characteristic, and that

understanding the various ways in which the album is connected to this tradition is vital to

understanding the complexity of Ocean’s vision for the album as both a cultural statement and a

sixty minute-long autobiography.

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70

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