We all knew that Frank Ocean's highly anticipated follow-up toChannel Orange would be a surprise affair. The unannounced album is the lingua franca of pop in 2016, if not this decade. Still, the singer-songwriter formerly known as Christopher Breaux managed to wring some twists out of what has become a familiar marketing strategy. Early Friday morning, August 19th, he unveiled a 45-minute short film, Endless, on Apple Music with no prior warning, and with the promise of more music to come. Then on Saturday morning, he presented a video clip for "Nikes," a weird mélange of neon visuals and beautiful naked bodies. That evening, he delivered the main course – or two, if you happened to make it to one of four pop-up shops where he distributed free copies of his Boys Don't Cry lookbook. Those magazines contained a CD version of his new album, Blonde, that has a different track sequence than the one that appeared on Apple Music at the same time.
The result is two new albums (and a half?) for the Frank Ocean fan to digest. However, the soundtrack to the Endless film seems like an impressionistic collage of demos, with tracks that fade out too quickly and a few sustained highlights. Meanwhile, Blonde sounds like the real deal. Sonically, it has the same contemplative and poetic tone as Ocean's lionized 2012 debut. In fact, it is so meditative that there are few beats at all; most of the Apple Music version is just gauzy laptop washes, pianos, laconically strummed guitars and his voice. He seems to have stripped himself to his bare thoughts, some of which he expresses inchoately. On "Close to You," he manipulates his vocals with odd effects so that they sound like a blur. Other times, he sings in cryptic verse. "Bad luck to talk on these rides/Mind on the road/Yet dilated eyes/Watch the clouds float/White Ferrari/Had a good time," he says on "White Ferrari."
R&B fans may grouse that, much like its predecessor, Apple Music labeled Blonde as "Pop." But unlikeChannel Orange and its Seventies singer-songwriter stoned-soul tones, this truly sounds like a post-millennial pop record, from its computerized ambience to a diverse list of contributors that include French electro-house producer Sebastian (who tells a silly little tale on "Facebook Story") and a lyrical reference to Elliot Smith's "A Fond Farewell" on "Seigfried." The presence of Kim Burrell's gospel testimonial near the end of "Godless" feeds into the minor narrative of urban pop heroes like Chance the Rapper, Kanye West and others re-engaging with spirituality.
