In mid-April, GAYLETTER published a rare interview with Frank Ocean, in which the typically media-shy artist opened up about his history working as a songwriter for hire. In response to a question about the takeaways he’d glean from this experience, Frank recounted a story about how he’d learned “to be quicker in the studio,” as a result of a “lifesav[ing]” invitation he’d received to work for free out of a professional studio:
“So I’m in there writing, and I’m stuck on half a verse. I can’t finish this verse. I’m like, I don’t know, I can’t put it together. [The person who extended the invitation initially] walks in and says, ‘How many songs you got?’ I’m like, ‘I got half a verse.’ And he looks at me and says, ‘You can’t come in here and write half a verse.’ So I play him half the verse and he’s like, ‘Well, that’s good, so you can stay.’ So I stayed, but I started trying to really figure out how to write songs. Eventually, after a couple years of doing that, I could write at least a couple songs in a four-hour block. It was just from learning, from writing dozens and dozens of demos.” — Frank Ocean
Given how notoriously selective he is with his output, it’s fascinating to think about Ocean cranking out songs like a shift worker on an assembly line.
