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How Frank Ocean Saved The Art Of The Album

5 August 2016 | 5:34 pm | Cyclone Wehner

"Creativity shouldn't be restricted by timelines and beholden to industry concerns about sustaining momentum because of short attention spans."

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The wait for Frank Ocean's mythic, almost apocryphal album Boys Don't Cry — the sequel to 2012's modern classic channel ORANGE — feels #eternal. But it may have been good for us — and good for music. There's ongoing speculation about the demise of the album in the digital age (and sales are dire). Yet the frenzy surrounding releases like Boys… proves that the format remains viable. Audiences haven't vanished.

In 2015, when Prince presented the Grammy for Album Of The Year" to Beck (over Beyonce, to Kanye West's disapproval), he pointedly said, "Albums – remember those? Albums still matter. Albums, like books and black lives, still matter." And urban music – soul, R&B and hip hop – artists are the ones who have reinvented the longplayer. Beyonce precipitated the boom in stealth issues with 2013's eponymous audio-visual masterpiece. Not that this approach always clicks. Bey's cohort James Blake, who stealthed The Colour In Anything in May, might have benefited from traditional promo. Nevertheless, social media is now pivotal to album roll-outs – and even majors rely on Twitter as a laissez-faire, crowd-sourced marketing department. Consumers – and media-types – co-opt the campaigns, generating hashtags, memes and Vines. They determine 'event' albums. Op-eds and blogs ensue (Beyonce was on a winner with LEMONADE's "Becky with the good hair" hook in Sorry). This same sector has kept the dream alive for Boys…
Creativity shouldn't be restricted by timelines and beholden to industry concerns about sustaining momentum because of short attention spans.
 
Hailing from New Orleans, Louisiana, the Prince-inspired Ocean started in the music biz as a writer for the likes of Justin Bieber (!). In Cali, he joined the Odd Future fold. Ocean busted out with 2011's mixtape nostalgia, ULTRA., introducing an avant R&B – illwave. But Ocean's influence soon transcended music. Prior to unveiling the conceptual channel ORANGE, Ocean divulged that his first love was a man. He won the Grammy for Best Urban Contemporary Album. The enigma's success defies the culture's latent homophobia.
 
The Pyramids singer has since collaborated consistently – he is credited on Beyonce and cameoed on John Mayer's Paradise Valley. In 2014 Ocean uploaded a segment of the ghostly Memrise on Tumblr, the song originally intended for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. In April of 2015 Ocean indicated, again on Tumblr, that his next album, accompanied by a 'zine, would arrive that July. It didn't, crushing fans. This year the dude signed on as a model for Calvin Klein's Fall campaign, a blurb stating that, in addition to an album, he'd penned a novel. Then last month Ocean's website, boysdontcry.co, was secretly updated. A playful, meme-friendly post, titled "Late", depicted a library slip with the album's numerous cancelled release dates as stamps – and suggested that Boys… would again materialise in July. It went viral. The Internet counted the days. This week on boysdontcry.co a video feed facilitated by Apple Music commenced, Ocean ostensibly in an industrial work space, with looped instrumentals. The New York Times revealed that Boys… will exclusively stream via Apple's platform for a fortnight – the fabled mag available in Apple stores.
 
There has been little tangible information about Boys… – three years in the pipeline. Danger Mouse was attached as producer. Word is that it'll be psychedelic, Ocean listening to The Beach Boys (not, apparently, The Cure, who aired a song entitled Boys Don't Cry in 1979). More recently, Ocean contributed to James Blake's album, co-writing My Willing Heart, and the Brit is involved in Boys…
The Boys… postponement has been all the more agonising for those Australian devotees yet to experience Ocean live. He was billed for 2013's Splendour In The Grass but, after one side-show in Melbourne, abandoned the remaining dates due to a torn vocal cord. 
 
Ironically, though urban music is perceived as fostering high turnover, it has many notorious procrastinators – including D'Angelo. Lauryn Hill is still to follow 1998's The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill despite successive reports of an imminent album from associates. Dr Dre's Detox had long become a derisive joke in random before he yielded Compton: A Soundtrack. Even traditionally copious urban acts such as Rihanna, Yeezy and Drake have tarried lately. Most of 2015's biggest albums dropped this year.
Even traditionally copious urban acts such as Rihanna, Yeezy and Drake have tarried lately. Most of 2015's biggest albums dropped this year.
 
While some artists exploit the Internet's anticipation, others resent the collective sense of entitlement. In March the alt-pop Sky Ferreira called for fans to stop bugging her about Masochism, the follow-up to 2013's Night Time, My Time, tweeting, "Bullying me on the Internet or whatever will not make the process faster." Still, that didn't stop Adele herself from having a dig at Ocean. "I'm just fucking waiting for Frank fucking Ocean to come out with his album," she quipped to Rolling Stone. "It's taking so fucking long. That sounds so stupid coming from me, doesn't it?" Ocean, who doesn't tweet, is conceivably quarantined from trolls. 
 
Protracted roll-outs can compromise an album's credibility. Ever the gamechanger, West turned the release of The Life Of Pablo into a cultural spectacle, launching it in tandem with his Adidas Yeezy Season 3 show at New York's Madison Square Garden. He played the record off laptop as the soundtrack. It was all streamed via Jay Z's TIDAL – and into cinemas globally. However, West's self-proclaimed "album of the life" (coincidentally, featuring Ocean) hasn't been lavished with the praise of his earlier projects. Underscoring TLOP's ephemerality, it's not come out on CD. In fact, TLOP was overshadowed by the Famous controversy and Taylor Swift's indignation.
 
In December a Guardian blog asked, "Should Frank Ocean's lack of new album be a cause for concern or celebration?" It optimistically concludes that the delay of Boys… will ultimately make it stronger. Creativity shouldn't be restricted by timelines and beholden to industry concerns about sustaining momentum because of short attention spans. Artists do need to 'live' to write songs.
 
Ocean's low profile has also advantaged other auteurs. The Weeknd might not have ballooned into a pop phenom in 2015, if not for the focus on him. And Miguel, another Ocean "rival", could still be slept-on, unable to express his Wildheart. In downtime, Malay, Ocean's key collaborator, guided Zayn on Mind Of Mine – possibly the year's most revelatory R&B outing. Regardless, 2016 has been sanguine for surprise albums with Beyonce's LEMONADE, David Bowie's Blackstar, Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool and The Avalanches' Wildflower. Ocean has just made it trickier for critics to order their annual "Best Of" lists. 

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