He was sitting there, clean shaven, shirt buttoned with a small smile on his face, trying to avoid eye contact with a huge camera while answering questions in the interview.
Christopher Breaux, who would be known to his fans as Frank Ocean, was proving to be the coy, brilliant mind that friends and critics claim him to be. It suddenly made sense to me why his eyes are closed in all his candid stage pictures.
“Orange reminds me of the summer I fell in love,” said Ocean to Jeff Himmelman in an interview with the The New York Times.
“I wanted to create worlds rosier than mine. I tried to channel overwhelming emotions.”
Hence the album title, Channel Orange.
Ocean’s first single, “Novacane,” released May 2011, articulates the feeling of numbness, as in wanting to feel something that you can’t, or loving someone who will never love you. Channel Orange is a record meticulously constructing ideas and feelings about love, loneliness, detachment from reality, addiction and pain, resulting in losing yourself and wondering if you’re alright with that.
“I guess I’m just inspired to tell stories and you gotta make sure the listener is listening to you. So if you put it in the form of a song, often times if the song is striking enough then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear listening,” said Ocean in an interview with BBC, 2012.
And it’s obvious that Ocean is creating a visual story with his unique lyrical language, an intangible photograph that illuminates an internal logic about the external world. Songs such as “Pilot Jones,” “Pyramids” and “Crack Rock” reflect stories of darker lifestyles and the saddening desperation for something better.
In 2009, Ocean deserted his ordinary life in New Orleans for a chance to make his mark. At first he struggled, working numerous part-time jobs. He struck gold when Def Jam record label offered him a contract, but he quickly broke that contract because of irreconcilable differences in regards to budget and writing style. By that time, he realized he could be making a substantial income writing songs for artists like John Legend, Beyonce, Bridget Kelly and Justin Bieber, which he did, by the way.
Because of this, he was able to produce and write his own record by soliciting beats and backing tracks from friends, and re-purposing popular songs for creative melodies. He was making a declaration in an effort to be different and brazenly exposing the faulty auto-tuned artists of the era.
“I could try to make myself likeable to you so you could write a piece that keeps my image in good standing, because I’m still selling this, or I could just say ‘My art speaks for itself,’” said Ocean to Himmelman.
His art’s voice has left an impression on the public. As a result, Ocean achieved a place in Time’s “The 2013 TIME 100,” an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, from artists and leaders to pioneers, titans and icons. In this article, Ocean was defined by John Legend as “fearless and innately creative.”
Some records come into your life at the right time. It simultaneously romanticizes the past and makes you wonder if things should’ve gone differently, challenging the familiar thoughts by charting new possible routes through terrain we’ve walked a hundred times. This is one of those albums. Songs from his album, Channel Orange, are appearing on playlists all over the world, including mine, and it’s obvious why.
