Frank Ocean on Renewed Interest in Albums & Moving Away From Singles
Written by SOURCE on January 17, 2023
More than six years after releasing his latest full-length offering, Frank Ocean might be teasing new music.
While sending out announcements for his latest Blonded merch sale, Ocean indicated he’s interested in making a longer piece of work again. In a cryptic statement on the back of a round of posters, Frank referenced the string of loosies he dropped in the fall of 2019, which included the tracks “DHL,” “In My Room,” “Dear April,” and “Cayendo.”
“In the summer of 2019, Blonded produced a photo series shot on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2019 by photographer Michael Marcelle,” the statement read. “The photo series follows the story of a fictitious Recording Artist as he navigates the radio system. In one scene the actor Jeremy Strong plays a Chairman of a major record label. On the walls: a clock, two framed records. The Chairman is flanked by another figure. Both are dressed in suits, wearing ties, and are positioned behind a long boardroom table. They are opposite a shadowed figure in the foreground—the Recording Artist—whose subjectivity the viewer is to inhabit.”
Referring to himself as “the Recording Artist,” Frank said he believes the model of one-off tracks is “outdated,” adding that “releasing singles is more suited to modern consumption habits where people curate their own playlists which are then shared within private circles.”
After calling the aforementioned strategy counterproductive, the statement reads, “The Recording Artist has since changed his mind about the singles model, and is again interested in more durational bodies of work.”
Since dropping his last album Blonde in 2016, Frank has released loosies including 2017 classics “Chanel,” “Provider,” “Biking,” and “Lens,” as well as the aforementioned handful of tracks in 2019. The infamous four-year wait between Channel Orange and his sophomore LP was long ago eclipsed by the wait for his next one.
