Review: Ocean Album Bigger Than The "He"

The best albums are often born out of the struggle to overcome adversity and pain. The process of picking over, examining, and releasing demons through the medium of music mostly results in albums that are honest, unguarded, and emotionally raw - all of which makes for a bloody-good listen. While Channel Orange, the debut album by 24-year-old singer-songwriter/rapper Frank Ocean, certainly fits into this category, it is Ocean’s backstory that makes this album somewhat revolutionary.

Weeks before the album’s release, early reviews highlighted the fact that in a handful of songs, Ocean sang about a love interest using the “he” pronoun rather than “she” when singing about an unrequited love. Shortly thereafter, Ocean himself released a bold statement confirming that his first love was indeed a man, but he stopped short at actually labelling himself as gay. In this context, Channel Orange is an extraordinary album because it is perhaps the first urban/hip-hop album to deal with homosexual feelings in an honest and vulnerable way by a member of a music community that has traditionally been criticised for being homophobic.

Ocean’s heartbreak is palpable on Bad Religion, a track which plays more like a prayer than a song. It opens with Ocean uttering the line, “Taxi driver be my shrink for the hour” over a quivering church organ. He goes on to confess, “It’s a bad religion, being in love with someone that could never love you. I could never make him love me.” Equally confessional is album standout Forrest Gump, a sparse, beat-driven, Motown-influenced track where Ocean  repeats over and over, “You run my mind boy.”

It is important to state that while Channel Orange does deal with Ocean’s unrequited love for another man, the album’s themes are much broader and bigger than the “he” pronoun. The album plays as a concept album, a social commentary about modern life in Southern California. Album highlight Super Rich Kids examines the idea of rich kids having fake friends, nannies, and absent parents, and pining for real love over a pulsing Bennie And The Jet’s-aping piano stab. The theme is continued on the smooth soul of Sweet Life, a song that explores living the high-life in Ladera Heights - a suburb that Ocean calls the ‘black Beverly Hills.” And while it’s refreshing to listen to a rapper wax lyrical about something other than the hood; there is enough gritty material here (drug use on the hypnotic Crack Rock, drug dealing on the minimalist Pilot Jones, and prostitution on the ten-minute electro-funk centrepiece Pyramids) to narrate a well-rounded life.

Musically, Channel Orange wears its influences on its sleeve (Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Marvin Gaye to list a few) as Ocean successfully combines elements of hip-hop, Motown, soul, trip-hop, electro, funk, and samples to produce a fresh, gravity-defying urban sound. The album is interspersed with interludes (the best of which, Fertilizer, could work as a fully-realised song), which gives the album an Old-Skool feel and holds it all together despite its variety of musical styles. 

Channel Orange is a modern urban masterpiece which positions itself nicely next to classic R&B albums such as The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, CrazySexyCool, Homebrew, Maxwell’s Urban Suite, and Purple Rain. And if you have been waiting for a modern-day take on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, this, my friends, is it.

Listen to Channel Orange for FREE here.

Read Frank Ocean's coming out statement here.

Watch the video for Thinkin Bout You below.