A blaring alarm clock leads into “Novacane,” the aforementioned drug-fueled Coachella sex odyssey, in which Ocean is first figuratively and then literally intoxicated by a dental student who was at the festival to see Z-Trip: “She said she wanna be a dentist really badly/ She’s in school paying for tuition, doing porn in the Valley/ At least you workin’.” Produced by Stewart, this was deeply accessible mainstream R&B, but with lyrics that veered far from the norm.ĭitto “Swim Good,” another ostensible radio hit, this one about driving straight into the Pacific with someone else’s dead body in your trunk. Immediately Ocean introduces a deep longing for the innocence of youth, when “every moment was so precious.” Just as quickly, grownup problems come jarringly into focus. After some scene-setting sounds from tape decks and 8-bit video games - sounds central to the millennial childhood experience - the project begins in earnest with an adaptation of “Strawberry Swing,” the swirling reverie from Viva La Vida that stands as one of Coldplay’s finest. fuck em.”īoth the dreams and the talent were abundantly clear as soon as you pressed play on Nostalgia, Ultra. A few weeks later, on his since-shuttered Twitter account, Ocean lashed out at his label: “fuck Def Jam & any company that goes the length of signing a kid with dreams & talent w/ no intention of following through. But when the company held Nostalgia, Ultra in limbo, Ocean opted to release it himself through Tumblr, under the banner of Odd Future - a fortuitous choice given the heat the Wolf Gang was generating at the time. A friendship with Tricky Stewart, the producer behind hits like Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” led to a deal with Def Jam. By the late aughts he got work writing songs for the likes of Brandy (“1st & Love”), John Legend (“Quickly”), and Justin Bieber (“Bigger”). ![]() ![]() After Hurricane Katrina, he traveled back to the LA area to pursue a music career. Born in Long Beach, Christopher “Lonny” Breaux had moved with his family to New Orleans at age 10. Who was Frank Ocean, anyway? Information started to trickle out. The extent to which this person could thrill and confound listeners was not yet clear, but the boundless possibility was self-evident. No one could have predicted where Ocean would steer his abilities on the following year’s masterful debut album Channel Orange, and certainly not on Blonde, his legitimately game-changing 2016 opus. He was too idiosyncratic to pin down and too gifted to ignore. Ocean was making straight-up pop music, slightly skewed and seasoned with a taste for basic pop culture at its best. The most prominent members of the Wolf Gang to date had been spearheading an abrasive and juvenile form of populism, with the chaotic energy of punk and hardcore and the provocative pranksterism of shock-rock. It also felt distinct from the output of Ocean’s Odd Future peers. I vividly remember laying on a hotel bed and marveling at these songs for the first time, thinking to myself that, yes, this was quite an improvement on what Drake and Trey Songz were doing at the time. To hear it was to recognize a generational talent in waiting. Nostalgia, Ultra, released 10 years ago today, introduced one of the greatest, most influential figures in the modern music landscape. Dude alluded to Radiohead, Van Halen, and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” within less than a minute of audio, just before implying he deserved at least as much attention as Drake and Trey Songz. The project’s radio single was a story-song about going to Coachella to see Jay-Z and ending up entangled with a woman who just wants to be numbed by sex and drugs. #NOSTALGIA FRANK OCEAN FULL ALBUM FOR FREE#On his debut mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra, available for free on his Tumblr, the interludes were named for old video games: “street fighter,” “metal gear solid,” “goldeneye,” “soul caliber.” He sang over instrumentals from Coldplay, MGMT, and (much to Don Henley’s chagrin) the Eagles, possessing them as his own with the confidence of peak Lil Wayne. ![]() His voice was bright and clear and fluid, yet too muscular and gritty to be waved off as saccharine - think Stevie Wonder with more gospel heft or Usher gone slightly off-kilter. This was too good to be true: Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, the mostly teenaged skate-rat hip-hop collective who had been barraging their way toward the center of music discourse, now included a 23-year-old R&B singer by the name of Frank Ocean.
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