Soloĭulcet vocals and a pipe organ are the bare bones of this mellow stoner anthem, which gets a memorable reprise midway through from Ocean's Pink Matter collaborator André 3000. While we'll surely be unpacking Blonde's 17 tracks for weeks to come, here are five that caught our ears on first listen: Pink + Whiteīeyoncé, is that you? The Lemonade queen - who recruited Ocean for her own Superpower in 2013 - can faintly be heard in the background of this heavenly, piano-driven ballad, whose breezy melodies and wistful lyrics make it the quintessential track for driving with the windows down as summer draws to a close.
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His third studio effort is streaming exclusively on Apple Music now, but was also made available in physical form at a series of pop-up shops nationwide Saturday, where the album's companion magazine revealed A-list credits including Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and André 3000. Nikes is easily an album standout and offers a perfect tease of what's to come on the rest of Blonde, another poetic, diary-like entry to Ocean's already-peerless catalog.
Addressing matters of class, materialism and passion through dreamy, distorted vocals, the song has the trademark vulnerability of Ocean's Channel Orange and Nostalgia, Ultra, while also moving him into more sonically adventurous territory. So when the reclusive crooner finally returned with new material this weekend, fans were ecstatic to receive not one, but two albums: the sprawling, subdued visual effort Endless, released on Apple Music late Thursday night, and the more traditional Blonde (or Blond, depending on whether you choose to use the cover art or iTunes spelling).īlonde opens with spellbinding first single Nikes, whose eccentrically grandiose video Ocean released Saturday morning.
It was an agonizing four-year wait for more Frank Ocean.