With a penchant for Prada and Comme Des Garçons, and the ability to make the uncool look cool (Arc’teryx is now a hypebeast essential thanks to Ocean), he’s undeniably one of the fashionable men in music. He knows what looks good, what fits and what brands he definitely needs to be buying in to to earn him a regular place on our best-dressed lists. That said, one thing that is all too apparent about Frank Ocean is his unimpeachable sense of style. No wonder one of his favourite T-shirts reads “Maintain The Mystery”. Not only does he drop music without any warning, much like Queen B (lest we forget the unexpected Blonde and Endless album drops in 2016), but he also gives barely any insight into his personal life, despite being fairly active on social media, and rarely agrees to interviews. But once he was out of their shadows, not much changed. In the years before dropping his first album, Nostalgia, Ultra, he was hiding under the surface, writing music for Beyoncé and Justin Bieber. That alone is enough to consider Blond(e)d a triumph, however the hell you spell it.Įxperience the music behind Frank Ocean’s Blonde album covers on iTunes or stream it via Apple Music today.Thirty-four-year-old Frank Ocean is one of the music industry’s most elusive players. He’s more than the voice of a generation at this point he’s the artist that your favorite rappers and musicians are trying to keep up with, even after a four year hiatus. Like so many things about this release, he’s chosen the method of delivery most likely to be indigestible by the giant sorting, tagging and archiving stomach of the internet–while simultaneously making aware of our place in the belly of the beast.īut then again, this is Frank “The Enigma” Ocean we’re talking about. At the same time by releasing multiple spellings with graphics that contradict or vary from the official title used by streaming services, Ocean seems to be intentionally messing with us. There is surely some method to the madness when one considers the way the spelling and typographical choices play off gendered constructions, echoing the projects visual and musical themes…”blond” being masculine, “blonde” being feminine and “blonded” being what all of us are in a post-August 20th, 2016 world. Our guess? the Blond puzzle, seeped in matters of identity, sexuality and non-normative gender roles, is meant to break both the internet and the antiquated lexicon used to describe not just music, but a person’s identity within and without it.
Maybe it’s Kanye levels of misdirection, maybe it’s another brilliant ploy to keep us neck-deep in the book and not wonder what Frank Ocean’s got coming next for another four years. After all, why choose one cover when the internet lets you have all the versions you like (and a ‘zine and a film and…and…)īut given the level of artistic care and sheer effort that have gone into the whole complex of creative material released around Blond(e)d we believe there’s something else at work. Now, it’s easy to chalk this up to last-minute alterations in the mad-dash to this massive, multi-layered roll-out, or to dismiss it as artistic indecision.
Three distinctive versions of the album’s cover pop up on the ripped CD, all with their own stylistic take on the album’s name: Blonde, Blond and Blonded.