That summer without Frank Ocean
I. Lonnie Breaux and I
“Oh Little One, I’d tell you good news that I don’t believe
If it would help you sleep
Strange Mercy” -St. Vincent, “Strange Mercy”
In the Spring of 2015, R&B singer Frank Ocean made a Tumblr post announcing his second album, Boys Don’t Cry, would be released that summer. Ocean’s post set the music world ablaze. His debut Channel Orange and the inescapable single “Thinking Bout You” had made Ocean’s a household name in 2012, with gloomy teens (me) and middle aged amateur body builders (my dad) alike crooning in their cars. Finally, he was back.
The Louisiana native’s return had been long awaited. Nigh, destined. People needed new Frank. They needed the mind behind “Pyramids” back. They needed that soulful, sweet, pained voice to whisper new sweet nothings in their ear. They need him to sprinkle some of that magic into their summer the way he once had only a few years ago.
I needed Frank because Frank had opened up my ears to a whole new sound in 2012. I thought “thinking about you” was overplayed until afriend brought Channel Orange over on vinyl and showed me just what wax could do to an R&B production. The warmth of his voice washing over me as he sang about his first love, or those warm rich nights on the roof, or that boy who went running through his mind told me that there was more to popular music then I’d realized before. Channel Orange was as much an artistic force as it was a sacrifice made public by a man who would reveal himself to be increasingly private in the coming years.
In the months before I graduated high school in June of 2013, I was deep in the throes of nostalgia. Fitting then that I would find Frank Ocean’s mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra and learn that the singer and I shared some virtual childhood highlights. where Channel Orange opens with the sound of a PlayStation one booting up and the menu music of Street Fighter 2, Nostalgia, Ultra leans in on Frank’s video game influences with samples of Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, and Goldeneye audio sprinkled across the project. A clip of women arguing over Radiohead’s “Optimistic” also made it onto the album, something that I had to loop 3 times over on first hearing. Was that my favorite rock band getting thrown down alongside Nintendo 64 games in a track with Metal Gear Solid in its name? Who was this guy and why weren’t we best friends already?
Over the next couple of years Frank’s music would become a close friend of mine. What I fell in love for the first time in 2014, there was Frank telling me how it felt then and what it would feel like when it ended. As I enjoyed my first wild college nights, there was Frank detailing the antics we would soon be partaking in. When I didn’t want to do my homework at 1 a.m. I would talk to the other nocturnal undergraduates about his music and the way those sonic landscapes elevate over the bullshit of Our Lives.
And finally he was back.
Until he wasn’t.
This is the first part of a multi-part story I began writing in September 2018. Thus far only parts 1 & 2 have been written.
