The fantastic “Self Control” begins as a high-pitched novelty track, turns into an acoustic-strummed sexual come on, and then effervesces with pained cries for companionship.
On “Solo,” what seemed like a irreverent tale of dropping acid and hooking up becomes total cry-bait as Ocean arches his voice upward and sings about hell, heaven, and the constellations. The payoff of these songs often comes in musical shifts, when melodies turn plaintive and direct as Ocean pivots from describing small momentary details to longterm emotional effect. Ocean sings about relationships defined by drugs and sex and car rides occasional signifiers making clear we’re in the realm of memory, like when he adds the aside “16, what was I supposed to know” as the wide-eyed and wrenching “White Ferrari” unfolds.
It makes sense: Dance music is about the now, and these songs aren’t. “Ivy” quavers on a fine knitting of guitar lines “Solo” just has an organ for a few moments on “Skyline To” it sounds like there’s a drum performance happening a room or two away from the vocal booth, providing more texture than timekeeping. Ocean is still partly an R&B artist, but he increasingly submerges the “R” of rhythm and blues as long stretches of his music drift by with nary a drum hit or 808 clap. It’d be art nonsense if it didn’t pack so much power in so many unexpected places. Save for one glorious pop waltz, “Pink + White,” the songs on Blond(e) mostly operate by the twisty logic of how a narrative might actually unfold in the mind, rather than on the radio. Ocean previously made brilliant use of these conventions on his way to next-big-thing status in pop and R&B, but he has returned after a four-year silence with a radically different way of working. Popular music usually has a clear and agreed-upon relationship to time, allowing you to live for three and a half minutes not by the ticktock of the clock but by the tap of your toe and your awareness of the number of choruses that have passed. Why the Myth of Meritocracy Hurts Kids of Color Melinda D. And on the luminous new track “Ivy,” he describes a callous breakup but keeps saying that when he thinks about the relationship, “the feeling still deep down is good.” Good: one simple word explains and colors all the complexity he’s sung about elsewhere in the song. He references car models-Acuras, Ferraris, X6s-as shorthand for life phases.
The blonds and blondes of Blond(e) are, on one level of interpretation, ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends.
His 2011 debut had the self-explanatory title Nostalgia, Ultra and his 2012 breakout, Channel Orange, was inspired by a teenage summer that, he said, seemed “orange.” He’s like the memory machine in Pixar’s Inside Out, processing the past into gemlike objects that can be sorted by visual cue and emotional essence. Ocean’s obsession with time has been well-documented by now. The first time his unadorned vocals appear on that album, Ocean sings, “We'll let you guys prophesy / We gon' see the future first.” The line comes across as a challenge to get on his level and unhitch from the present-a necessary step before accessing the deep pleasures of his uncompromising new music. The more significant release, called either Blonde or Blond depending on where you acquire it, repeatedly laments nights, season, and years that can never be retrieved. One of his two new albums is called Endless, even though its songs all seem to end too soon. Frank Ocean is still thinking about forever.