Frank Ocean opens up about his writing process

R&B vocalist Frank Ocean is the star of Calvin Klein’s AW16 campaign. Shot by British photographer Tyrone Lebon, the singer, songwriter and rapper features in the ad alongside a cross-generational roster of talents that includes the likes of supermodel Kate Moss, Vogue creative director Grace Coddington and Atlanta rapper Young Thug.

Alongside the print campaign, the brand has premiered a series of short films featuring these campaign stars. In Ocean’s video, which is stylish and lo-fi, the enigmatic musician (who seldom gives interviews) opens up about the role music plays in his life, and how he goes about writing it.

“If you start to have it and you keep it up for four or five weeks and then you stop, you feel like you’re missing something in your day – that’s what music is for me,” he says. “It feels like a necessary act.”

“You just romanticise something that’s in the past, which is fantasy because it’s not exactly how it went down,” he continues, giving us an insight into his music writing process. “Fantasy plays the role of the supplement. I draw on fantasy to make things hyperreal, I guess, to saturate the colours.”

Ocean’s Calvin Klein campaign comes amid rumours that the singer’s long-awaited new album Boys Don’t Cry finally has a release date. Last Friday, his website was updated with a library card bearing lots of stamps for past release dates and two future dates: July 2016 and November 2016. Whether he’ll actually drop his album on either of these dates, time will tell.