Has Frank Ocean just begun his album rollout?
If there’s one thing more unlikely than Santa dropping down your chimney, it’s Frank Ocean dropping music into our playlists. Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t dream, and perhaps our dreams aren’t that wild considering the elusive singer has just shown more activity in the span of 24 hours than he has in the past 7 years. And yes, we know it sounds like we’re talking about a mythical creature rather than a musician here, but that’s exactly the kind of reputation Ocean has built for himself.
The activity in question comes in the form of a 24-second snippet uploaded to Ocean’s Instagram story on Thursday afternoon (December 7), in which Frank can be seen dancing to it in a recording studio. It’s the second time in less than a month that he’s teased new music, following a minute-long, audio-only clip he shared in November (also via Instagram story), which, for Ocean fans, is like hitting the jackpot, considering just how long they’ve been starved for new material.
Ocean posted the clip as the last of four Instagram stories today: the first directing fans to his blonded website where a new line of soccer apparel and a new batch of Blonde LPs have gone up for sale. The third is a video of Frank impressing Nigerian artist Slawn’s son Beau Beau with a synth arpeggiator during a recent trip to London. In typical Ocean fashion, the snippet was posted without context, leaving the listener us all to speculate on what might be next for the reclusive artist. So, of course, the only reasonable reaction is to run with it and ignore the inevitable disappointment when the teased track never releases (or for another year, at least).
While Ocean has managed to keep his reasoning for such an extended hiatus under wraps, a comment recently made by one of his collaborators might just explain it. In an interview with the culture Substack Blackbird Spyplane, artist John Carroll Kirby — who Ocean worked with on “DHL” — was presented with a rumour about Ocean the writer had heard from his friends on the LA music scene: “that he feels frozen under the expectations people have put on him to follow up Blonde with a 10/10 classic. Like, he can’t bear the idea of putting something out and people going, ‘Huh, kinda mid’, and he’s paralyzed by that.”
The writer asked John if he had any firsthand insight into that claim. John responded that he’s under an NDA when it comes to his work with Ocean directly, but that, commenting from the outside, he’s “a perfectionist”, adding: “I think what makes him so compelling is his volatility, and there’s a flip side to that, which is sometimes in executing deadlines, or trying to make a follow-up, or meeting expectations, there can be a volatility.” It makes sense: surely, Ocean’s sitting on a bunch of music, but is perhaps still fine-tuning it as a whole body of work. “I have high hopes for whatever comes next,” John added.
On Reddit, fans are hypothesising what the title of his upcoming record could be. Ocean updated his streaming service banner to a series of images of him grinning, which was similarly part of a limited-edition poster he printed for Channel Orange’s anniversary. One fan suggested “Smiles”, saying it might be related to the famous happy smile drug symbol . Another said it could be “Starstruck”. All of these are reaches, though. In reality, we have no idea.
In all honesty, you’re more likely to win the lottery than ever predict a Frank Ocean release. It could arrive in a week, in two years, even another seven year wait wouldn’t shock us at this point. But hey, at least we can spin back Blonde for the 378th time and be thankful for what we have!
