From Nostalgia, Ultra’s “What’s a Radiohead?” mini-sketch to naming his label Boys Don’t Cry, he’s got an appreciation for heady guitar work, which he employs on Blonde’s second track. Frank Ocean – “Ivy” (from Blonde, 2016)įrank f-s with some indie rock. Lyrically, Ocean cuts to the core, managing to sexualize photosynthesis (“I’ve been meaning to f- you in the garden / Been breathing so hard we both could use the oxygen”) and link it to mankind’s most primal (also garden-related) instincts (“Feeling like Adam when he first found out this existed.”)ĩ. But MGMT have scarcely sounded this good since 2007’s Oracular Spectacular, and they absolutely never sounded this provocative. In the end, we decided “No Church in the Wild” isn’t enough Frank’s song to crack this early career canon, though certainly not out of failing to go hard enough. Parsing through less than a decade of material to come up with the top 10 Frank Ocean songs was no easy task.ġ0. Frank Ocean – “Nature Feels” (from Nostalgia, Ultra, 2011)įollowing the note on “No Church,” there’s no doubt Frank owes a heavy debt here, too, building this mixtape track largely from “Electric Feel”s’ slithering disco bass. It’s crazy to think there was once a time he was saddled with descriptors like “Odd Future crooner Frank Ocean.” In the years since, he’s welcomed us into one of music’s most sensitive psyches and delivered on the promise of an artist whose early-career feature bested both Beyoncé’s and…um… Otis Redding’s on Kanye West and JAY-Z‘s collaborative mega-flex, Watch the Throne.
Channel Orange was released five years ago Monday (July 10) and before its arrival, a mixtape and handful of features to Ocean’s name. But four years before Blonde intensified his cultural and critical dominance (as well as his bank account), Frank was just an up-and-comer. Just last year, his profound insight into music consumption finessed him from an unhappy record deal into prosperous free agency.
In five years, Frank Ocean has gone from releasing his proper debut album to proving the flimsy absurdity of the words “proper debut album.”
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