The young artist delivers a successful album, "Blond", released on August 20. A return to the origins that make this melancholic performer a genius. An album that we will talk about in 50 years.
Frank Ocean's multiple influences, from rap to rock to jazz, could have made him a lost artist. But it is not. Through his first collaborations (writing music for Brandy and John Legend among others) at the release of the beautiful "Blond", his latest opus that all fans were waiting for with insane impatience, we can safely say that Frank Ocean masters the art of communication better than his colleagues. Very discreet, the 28-year-old genius knows how to make a public literally devoted to his cause languish.
4 years after "Channel Orange", released in July 2012, Frank Ocean releases his new masterpiece, soberly entitled "Blond". At first listening, we say that rarity, absence (4 years, it's not nothing) is here a guarantee of quality. "Blond" says to music lovers: "That's it, it's diamond that I wanted to polish". The album is an initiatory journey, a poetry of just over an hour that explores the depths of the soul, where the voice of Frank Ocean (sometimes accompanied by Beyoncé, in "Pink and White") is clearly perceived in an arrangement of harmoniously used instruments. Any connoisseur will sometimes feel the shadow of the great Marvin Gaye touch Ocean's inspiration. It must be said that the latter has a very romantic, deep and almost tormented vision of musical art. "Blond" is a kind of return to the roots of African-American music, but in a very modernist way, skillfully marrying it with pop sounds.
Drugs, consumer society or sexuality: the themes explored by Frank Ocean in "Blond" are those explored both during his writing process (via his beautiful blog or his musical admonitions) and in his life. A true hymn of appeasement, "Blond" will delight those who let themselves go in this very pretty urban tale. With a sense of rhythm and a talent that, definitely, make Frank Ocean enter the pantheon of legends.
