Whether fans know him for the recent announcement about his sexuality or for his feature in the Kanye West and Jay-Z album “Watch the Throne,” Frank Ocean has proven with his debut album “Channel Orange” that his talent validates the blogosphere buzz surrounding his name.
In “Channel Orange,” the rising R&B star harnesses the power of his chilling falsetto and ambient vocalizations to narrate the story of glamorous socialites yearning for more than they already have, teenagers lost in the cheap thrills of substance abuse, and a young girl dressed up as an Egyptian queen, prostituting herself to keep the bills paid.
Ocean reflects on the rifts within society and within individuals, revealing the traps of the fast-paced material world filled with those unable to unravel the meaning of their own experiences.
In a way, the album offers entire sense without any predictability. Ocean’s tracks alternate between casual upbeat tempos and the more drawn-out somber melodies that showcase Ocean’s own smooth vocals, flooded by trance-like echoes in the background.
Each song suspends listeners in a mesmerizing daydream, pulling them into one song of expectations and then carrying them into an entirely different world with the next.
Reminiscent of Ocean’s mixtape “Nostalgia, Ultra,” released in early 2011, this album also employs his trademark use of monologue recordings and sounds of cassette tapes fast-forwarding and rewinding.
The songs also experiment with different mediums of sound ranging from finger snaps, keys jingling and planes taking off to the diverse talents of André 3000, fellow Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt and John Mayer. Certain songs are paced by the heavy banging of the piano while others by the tempo of synthetic beats, allowing the album to extend beyond the conventional bounds of an R&B album, breaching into genres of jazz funk, electrifying 80s pop and even gospel.
Although the CD lists 17 tracks, these are by no means individual songs that can be listened to as singles. The entire album is a cohesive package with tracks titled “Start” and “End.” Each song streams seamlessly into the next, both musically and narrative-wise.
Descriptions of the fading extravagance in “Sweet Life” (“The starshine always kept you warm”) and his lone pleas of desperation in “Super Rich Kids” (“I’m searching for a real love, talkin’ ’bout a real love”) reflect hollow descriptions of the human soul to mirror the equally haunting mood of his melodies.
Frank Ocean uses his debut album to explore the conditions for love while holding true to his avant-garde vision of what his music should be. For those who have yet to hear “Channel Orange,” Ocean’s music is a drift off into the universe but also an awakening into reality and more than worth the time.
““ Lynn Chu
Email Chu at lchu@media.ucla.edu.