Content, and Lack Thereof: The Curious Case of Frank Ocean

“How far is a light-year?” That is the question posed by the last audible voice on “Futura Free”, the closing track on the anticipated sophomore commercial full-length musical piece by Frank Ocean, which is titled either Blond, or Blonde. The simple answer — that a single light-year is equivalent to approximately six trillion miles, belies the fact that a light-year, like the creative output of Frank Ocean, is a unit of length often misunderstood as a unit of time.

A work that oftentimes felt like it was being dangled at the end of an interminably long fishing hook cast out with near-certainty as far back as last April, Blonde was finally released to Apple’s digital outlets this past Saturday evening, shortly after the reveal of four metropolitan newsstands (in New York, London, Los Angeles, and curiously enough the Chicago suburb of Evanston) temporarily commandeered by Ocean with the purpose of distributing a free 350-page magazine whose centerpiece is a slightly different compact disc version of the iTunes/Apple Music version of the album.

The eccentric method of Blonde’s physical distribution can be interpreted partially as Ocean’s self-aggrandizing retort to the free digital stream, a now ubiquitous format for the release of new music viewed as insurgent in the years leading up to his July 2012 debut album Channel Orange. Sure to be used as a tool of comparison in the deluge of subreddit debate and biased thinkpieces disguised as music journalism in the weeks to come, Ocean’s similarly color-obsessed Channel Orange was, in its earliest days, precious enough to the cult of internet music geeks to have a still-unfulfilled campaign for an official vinyl release. In the four years since, it has taken on a life of its own — regarded by critics as a sort-of Pet Sounds for the smartphone generation, Ocean’s lysergic hieroglyph proved both broadly appealing enough to revitalize the concept of pop structure as an instinctive artform, while being formally stunning enough to have thrown into relief its creator as a folk hero for the social outcast.

The social outcast — still, and maybe eternally, Ocean’s target demographic — is acknowledged as a surrogate set of deaf ears upon which the elder female voice (since identified as Ocean’s aunt Rosie, also featured on Channel Orange interlude “Not Just Money”) of Blonde’s early spoken interlude “Be Yourself” is addressing. The caller warns the receiver of the message regarding the influence of substances in making them “sluggish, lazy, stupid, and unconcerned.” These dull yet bracing adjectives, often generalized toward a generation which the man born Christopher Edwin Breaux is often thought to represent as delegate, interrupts the sense of introspection that the auteur of Blonde relies on as his main creative crutch. It also introduces a beautiful, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind-esque piano motif that recurs on the album’s spoken interludes, including the aforementioned “Futura Free”, which calls upon an interview of Ocean’s younger brother to ground our deity in the earthly context of his family.

The implication here is such that any individual, even one whose artistic period has already been immortalized, still has to answer to his own creators at the end of the day. The balancing act is quietly essential to the way that Ocean is addressing his audience after a long public absence, the recluse grabbing an axe and “Here’s Johnny!”-ing his way through the fourth wall. The effect, to this writer at least, is as heartrending as Kanye West closing a post-Donda headlining Coachella set with “Hey Mama”, yet not as cloying as since-exposed mime Drake using a recorded voicemail from his grandmother for empathy on his (admittedly still) standout Take Care, a relic of pop music pre-Channel Orange.

It is important to note, though, is that my personal reading of “Be Yourself” as a linchpin of Blonde is no more or less justified than that of anyone to speak on the record from this point on. By finally releasing another wholly realized product, Ocean may have also unintentionally brought back into fashion the practice of listening to the album as a whole before engaging it as a point of discussion. This thought is, of course, unfair to the hundreds of thousands of albums (several of the best of them indebted to Frank) released since Channel Orange. However, it is also possible that Blonde, which certainly fits the stereotype of the “difficult sophomore album” may sour his public perception in the process.

Alas, it would be lacking to not also bring into focus the existence of Endless, the 45-minute long/half-formed “visual album” released by Ocean to tide over the masses for the 24 hours prior to Blonde. Much like the introductory mixtape nostalgia.ULTRA, this documentary of a man at work occupies a unique place in a body of work that wants deeply to highlight the messy process of creation. Whereas nostalgia.ULTRA relies on the search for a voice through a hybrid of sampling amidst several “almost there” moments of realization, Endless is a chronicle of that same person trying to create from scratch an object entirely foreign to his repertoire. The contrast is stark, but the baseline of restlessness pervades throughout. These two may, eventually, end up being companion pieces in the same way that 808s & Heartbreak and Yeezus stand out as aberrations in the typically pop-minded discography of Kanye West, a multimedia polymath who seems to have had a great impact on Ocean’s work thus far.

And, like West in the early stages of his career, Ocean seems to be grappling with the idea of his status as a figure of importance — though in a much more subdued manner. In spite of years spent avoiding the spotlight (in fact, he may be the most conscientious “pop star” in history) on his personal life, Ocean’s rapidly elevated popularity between albums gave him the space needed to deliver both Endless and Blonde without a grain of actual cynicism lobbied against him, a business model that we might see more musicians adopt over time as a result.

Of course, it will be hard for any contemporary to be able to get a similarly warm public reception by aping the Frank Ocean blueprint, though it might not be surprising to see a few crash and burn trying to do so. The only thing that this lengthy (at times, agonizing) album rollout has proven is that Ocean may have had a plan all along, using the space between releases to build his own myth.