Over its ten-minute runtime, it moves from Blade-Runner-R&B to ancient-Egypt-themed-club-banger to ambient-apocalypse. “Pyramids” like its title, is a monument it’s hard to believe that any human could have sat down and created it. That’s part of what makes “Pyramids” such an unbelievable accomplishment, at any age, but especially at 24. But he also arrived fully formed, with a maturity in his mid-twenties that rivaled Stevie Wonder’s. Now over ten years into his career, he’s released only two “albums” (strictly speaking) and spent more time in hiding than he has in the spotlight.
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In terms of career trajectory, Frank Ocean exists completely out of time. He says it himself in the song, “we’ll let you guys prophesy.” I don’t have an answer, and I don’t think Frank does either. Maybe it’s to highlight the jaw-dropping moment when the drums stop and the instrumental becomes completely weightless, anchored by Frank’s normal-register vocals delivering some of the most honest lyrics of his career. Maybe it’s a cry for attention, a desperate attempt to “mean something to you” in the same way that the speaker of “Nikes” commands. Maybe it’s a joke: four long years waiting for the follow-up to Channel Orange and here’s Frank sounding like a chipmunk.
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Why does Frank Ocean enter Blonde, his most confident artistic statement, with ridiculously pitched-up vocals? I’ve heard solid thematic arguments, ones that connect to threads of childhood and innocence that run throughout the album. Sometimes those exercises produce something more meaningful than they’re intended to. “Biking” is like a thought experiment, a free-writing exercise that pushes everyone on the track to flex their skill and creativity. It’s this strength that allows him to take almost any subject, biking for example, and inject it with more emotion than some artists can sustain over entire albums. When people talk about Frank’s voice, they rarely point out this quality, the fact that at any moment his gentle and clear timbre can explode into rage and desperation. On “Biking,” that aggression is all concentrated in the last thirty seconds, where Frank barks unintelligibly until he’s out of breath. But Frank isn’t a pushover either there’s almost always an aggression in his music that makes itself known through other elements of the song. Sitting up against Jay-Z and Tyler, Frank’s verses are more affectionate, more melodic, less confrontational. “Biking” might be the clearest example of that dynamic. Instead, he keeps it mostly faithful, but always his own.įrank Ocean isn’t a rapper. When he drops into his lower register during the bridge and begins to ad-lib, it becomes clear how comfortable Frank is in the song, able to take it anywhere he wants it to go. Consequently, he ends up with maybe the most devastating vocal performance of his career, completely vulnerable and commanding at the same time. So Frank ups the ante he removes the drums, pares down the instrumental to a single keyboard and some strings, and puts all the pressure on his vocals. “(At Your Best) You Are Love” is, admittedly, a fairly low-stakes song for him to cover, sitting comfortably in his R&B wheelhouse alongside artists who are already clear influences. He’s able to interpolate and cover everything from Coldplay to The Isley Brothers without any reference point ever feeling out of place. Like all great artists, Frank Ocean is a master of reinterpretation.