Ocean began to find ways to hide in plain sight. “It totally ingrained this fear of addiction and of anything that could cause me to be addicted,” he said - love included. Ocean, born Christopher Breaux, would accompany his grandfather to 12-step meetings, where, he said, his grandfather, who had struggled with alcohol, heroin and crack, served as a mentor for other addicts. On “Pilot Jones” it’s drugs that create an impregnable wall: “Tonight you came stumbling across my lawn again/I just don’t know why/I keep on trying to keep a grown woman sober.” On both “Sweet Life” and “Super Rich Kids” the well-off are presented as both alluring and dangerous. On “Pyramids,” a long, astral trip of shimmery funk, he laments a woman who gets dressed up for her job at a strip club while the protagonist agonizes at home, unemployed: That’s absolutely clear from “Channel Orange,” which is filled with lovers who tantalize but remain at arm’s length. He’s written for Beyoncé and has collaborated with Jay-Z and Kanye West. Ocean’s dissents are starting to have wider effect. Ocean is also at the forefront of a larger push-back against the stasis in contemporary R&B, something in evidence in his organic vamps but also in the Weeknd’s narcotized lust and even mainstream dance music hybrids. While clearly part of a robust historical lineage Mr. Ocean’s universe, pretty much everyone is broken beyond repair. He makes warm, cloudy soul with echoes of Stevie Wonder, Prince and Pharrell Williams that’s almost never about seduction. Ocean, 24, is an extremely unflashy songwriter, avoiding big proclamations and broad brush strokes, instead leaning on conversational gambits and the power of detail.
“Channel Orange” (Island Def Jam), his beautiful first full-length studio album, will be released this month, and it’s rife with the sting of unrequited love, both on the receiving and inflicting ends. It’s certainly tougher to do so when they’ve been etched into song. “It’s more I decided to do something different, so that I might have a different outlook.” He added, “When they’re emotional things you can’t run away from them anyway.”
Ocean said as Everest was sniffing at some greenery. “When I think about the term ‘running away,’ probably it’s not the right one,” Mr. Ocean has fallen for based on Google searches, even though he’s never been there. Maybe to New York, or more likely to Toronto, which is more car friendly - outside the house were parked two BMWs, one red and newish and one silver and oldish - and which Mr. With that success has come a roller coaster of love and letdown, and that is why, he said, it’s now time to go. In that time he’s become an in-demand songwriter and now a rising star in his own right. ON a recent Saturday morning here Frank Ocean was up early, well rested and ready to walk Everest, his Bernese mountain dog, through the up-and-down streets near the modest and modern home he’s been renting near the foot of the Hollywood Hills.įor five and a half years he’s lived in this city, since he drove west from New Orleans with $1,200 in his pocket, spending $400 on the way for gas.