Be Yourself: Finding Queer Selfhood In Frank Ocean’s “Blond(e)”
When Frank Ocean came out four years ago, it was a revelation. As celebrity admissions go, it was a quiet one, but its impact reached far beyond a single artist’s declaration of same-sex attraction. In hip-hop, the divide between openly queer artists and the mainstream scene is stark. Though some female artists have straddled the line — Azealia Banks and Angel Haze being two examples — male artists tend to be forced into one camp or the other. Plenty of queer rappers like Big Freedia, Le1f, and Zebra Katz have gained a significant following, but they have remained on the outskirts of mainstream hip-hop, more often collaborating with pop and electronic artists than others in the hip-hop world. The fact that Frank Ocean had said that he felt attraction to men, as a member of prominent hip-hop collective Odd Future — whose sole female member is gay, but whose members have also been criticized for their frequent use of homophobic and misogynistic language — was possibly an unprecedented event.
Ocean’s coming out, like those of so many queer people, was not entirely by his choice. To understand how hyper-heterosexual R&B and hip-hop artists are expected to be, we need look no further than the fact that speculation about Ocean’s sexuality was prompted by, essentially, one word on Channel Orange: “boy.” The use of this word in a couple of romantic songs was enough to lead to immediate assumptions that Ocean was gay. After a British entertainment blog published this speculation, soon before Channel Orange’s official release, Ocean took to Tumblr to address his sexuality on his own terms.
What he wrote did not look like a coming out to a lot of people — it was quiet, personal, and didn’t include the words “gay” or “bisexual.” Yet if Ocean didn’t embrace any labels, neither did he reject them. His refusal to shy away from accusations of homosexuality — his refusal, in fact, to perceive them as accusations at all — added to the power of seeing a mainstream hip-hop artist proclaim that he had loved men. Though some felt his avoidance of labels like “bisexual,” labels many queer hip-hop artists embrace, was motivated by a desire not to be rejected by the mainstream hip-hop movement, Ocean has never denied that he is attracted to men. It’s what else that fact implies that he contests. He is constantly pushing against the attendant assumptions about who he loves, how he loves, how he moves in the world. And it is this fluidity, this refusal to be defined by outside forces, that makes Blond(e) such an important album.
From the title itself, Blond(e) prepares us for its duality. One of few gendered English words, it’s an opportunity to provide ambiguity in the identity of the person — or people — Ocean discusses as love interests. It’s no accident that Blonde, the female form of the word, is the one Ocean has chosen to be the album’s written title, the one people will select as its official identification. The male form Blond, by contrast, won’t be indexed by search engines or catalogued in iTunes. It’s visible only in the artwork of the album itself, mirroring the way that queer relationships are often treated as less real than straight ones, or hidden for reasons of safety and comfort. Blond(e) is Ocean’s first new project since he told the world his first love was a man, and rather than shying away from that weight, he has chosen to push into it.
Like many men who embrace attraction to men, Ocean has often been labeled gay, rather than queer or bisexual, as though his attraction to men cancels out any attraction to women he feels. It would be easy to stretch those same assumptions to this album, especially because the time period of the songs seems to coincide with the time of the queer relationship Ocean described in his coming out note. His open discussion of gay bars and blowjobs adds to that image. But most of the songs on the album are far from clear when it comes to whether Ocean is expressing love for a man or a woman — and for that matter, whether the love he is articulating is romantic, sexual, both, or neither. This allows for love songs that neither refuse to be labeled as gay, nor confirm that the label is appropriate. Rather, they suggest that these relationships are loving regardless of gender or sexuality, and in doing so create an experimental, queer space.
Blond(e) opens with “Nikes,” a song that sets a mood right away with slow drums and a beachy, electronic wash of sound. When Ocean’s voice first comes in, it’s a slight shock, edited to sound very high and electronic. In the video version of the song, this is matched with an altered, extremely deep voice. It’s as though the masculine and feminine sides of Ocean’s personality and desires have been split up, except that the division doesn’t seem to follow socially constructed assumptions about gender. It’s the higher, more feminine voice, for example, that says, “If you need dick I got you,” and the lower voice that proclaims, “I’ve been working on my bod, I feel hot.”
Ocean quickly turns to discussing a male love interest from a stereotypically female perspective. Lines like “He don’t talk much or nothing, but when he talk about something, we have good discussion” sound like they could be ripped from the lyrics of a Salt-n-Pepa song. Briefly, the song drops most of its backing and we hear Ocean’s voice in its natural pitch, singing “We’ll let you guys prophesy.” Then the slow drumbeat comes back, pushing us out of the personal space we’ve just been let into without any definitive explanations. This is a pattern that continues throughout the album, as Ocean in turn shows vulnerability, then throws up a wall of affected cool.
One of Ocean’s main withholding techniques on Blond(e) is presenting the views of others without comment, creating a tapestry of ideas in which his own opinion remains unclear. This occurs both when he speaks ideas that may not be his own, and when he literally has others speak for him, as his friend’s mother does in “Be Yourself.” The irony that a song called “Be Yourself” isn’t spoken by Ocean himself hangs almost too heavy, but the reason for the piece’s inclusion is oddly opaque. Throughout the album, drugs are presented as one of Ocean’s few escapes from heartbreak, and especially the heartbreak that comes with being queer and loving people who don’t feel the freedom to love you back. This brief, stereotypical anti-drug interlude seems oddly sarcastic for Ocean’s usual style. Perhaps the point isn’t so much the specific views his friend’s mother is expressing, but the fact that she is expressing ideas about who Ocean should be at all.
Mothers aren’t the only ones who have ideas of who we should be. Ocean also presents ideas of masculinity that come from his peers. In “Solo (Reprise),” André 3000 of OutKast raps lines like, “I’m so low that I can see under the skirt of an ant,” presenting a view of masculinity that relies on sexualizing and demeaning femininity. This aggressive vision of manhood is augmented with a subtler takedown of female desire in “Facebook Story,” in which French DJ SebastiAn discusses how his ex-girlfriend “started to be crazy” after he refused to accept her on Facebook, which he determines is clearly due to “pure jealousy for nothing.”
Faced with such violent ideas about what it means to be a man, it’s hard to know quite how Ocean reacts. Certainly, this doesn’t seem to be how he feels masculinity should look, but he doesn’t respond directly to the views he presents. Instead, we’re left to piece together his words and wonder what sort of effect these visions of manliness have had on a young, queer, black man.
The album often expresses tension between Ocean’s own emotions and the way others expect him to behave. “Godspeed,” a song that begins with him proclaiming, “I will always love you,” ends with gospel singer Kim Burrell singing the same lyrics. Even as Ocean embraces the feminine aspects of his personality, it seems he feels the need to give the stereotypically female part back to a female singer.
In “Ivy,” the second song on the album, Ocean addresses a love interest as an equal, not simply talking down to his love interest as a “kid,” but acknowledging a time when they were both “kids” together, putting them on equal footing. Unlike in a more typical male heterosexual love song, he is less interested in objectifying his lover than in untangling them, gaining access to the unknowable mind of another. Ocean’s voice is raw and intense, seeming at times like it’s about to break — just before the control comes back. Again, he lets us close only to quickly shove us away. It’s clear that Ocean isn’t losing control, but rather briefly, restrainedly letting himself be vulnerable. As a counter to the idea of strong, unemotional masculinity, Ocean’s open display of passion and heartbreak is extremely effective.
Blond(e) is full of such moments of emotional display, and they’re part of what makes the album so excellent. Ocean’s vocal talent and his willingness to tell personal stories about his love life lead to sweeping ballads of male desire that are hard to pull yourself out of. Songs like “Good Guy” and “White Ferrari” present imagistic love stories that focus on specific moments, yet simultaneously feel universal. The transitional space of a car ride, the feeling expressed in the line “I know you don’t need me right now” — they’re familiar, unexceptional emotions, but the specificity with which Ocean conjures them make them new again. Nowhere is this more striking than in “Nights,” which has a 90’s hip-hop jazz beat and an easy, laidback vibe. This relaxed atmosphere can slip into more of an affected cool, in songs like “Pink + White,” but here the effect is more intimate. The overwhelming tone is one of complete ease with the person he’s speaking to.
The personal nature of these songs is never uncomplicated, though. Even songs like “Solo” and “Self Control,” which from their titles might seem like places where Ocean will get to explore his identity free from other people’s input, are more about relationships with others and shaping yourself against them. Two beautiful songs about being yourself with another person, they are nonetheless heavy with the expectations that come with romantic relationships.
“Self Control,” especially, focuses on how difficult it is to be with someone who was raised differently from yourself. It’s hard not to read in Ocean’s plea, “Wish we’d grown up on the same advice,” a bitterness at a childhood that leads someone not to accept their own same-sex attraction. The beliefs of others never go away, even when we choose them willingly, and sometimes it can be too much. In “Pretty Sweet,” an overwhelming onslaught of conflicting voices swirls around Ocean, who sings, “Said you wanna hurt me now / You can’t end me now.” As the song speeds up, it feels like Ocean has chosen a path and committed to it, but it’s hard to say if he feels he’s chosen right or not.
It’s “Futura Free,” the last song on the album, that seems to have least to do with anyone else, and most to do with Ocean existing alone. As he talks about his own expectations for himself, there’s a slight deflation of all of the competing opinions of others he’s presented. Instead, we’re left with the most basic of human drives — “I’d say long as I could fuck three times a day and not skip a meal I’m good” — and the most grandiose of fantasies — “Sometimes I feel like I’m a god but I’m not a god.”
It’s clear, though, when Ocean says “If I was [a god] I don’t know which heaven would have me, Mama” that there’s something missing in these fantasies. This feeling of rejection is placed on the same footing as a lack of food or sex — despite Ocean’s need to create his own identity, he can’t go it alone. After a few seconds of silence, the song changes, and we hear Ocean and his friends talking, imaging the future. As with “Pretty Sweet,” there is a wash of different voices, and it becomes difficult to pick out any one individually. But now, instead of sounding overwhelming, it sounds like a base of friendship, support, potential. It sounds like uncertainty, but an uncertainty that is reaching towards something true.
