We are still waiting eagerly for Frank Ocean’s new album, expected to be titled Boys Don’t Cry. After a livestream appeared last week, reports suggested that Ocean would be releasing his album last Friday – only when Friday came, the day passed without incident. But now, a new piece of the puzzle has emerged: a leak from Ocean’s forthcoming Boys Don’t Cry magazine.

Over the weekend, Twitter superfans TeamFrankDaily have posted a selection of photos from the magazine that leaked on Tumblr:

It looks like a cool magazine – but is it real? In a hyper-accelerated news culture, it’s easy for fake stories to circulate as real, with verification only arriving once it’s too late. But, as the (extremely obsessive) fans on the Frank Ocean subreddit have pointed out, this could indeed be the real deal.

THE BUTT

A photo of a woman’s butt covered in green litter can be seen in the magazine, which as Reddit users have noted, corresponds with a previous Instagram post by artist Vasilisa Forbes last year suggesting that it had been made for a Frank Ocean video shoot. Is this a still from the video?

Does anyone remember this from FrankOcean

THE DIRTBIKE

Photographer Jim Mangan (who has previously featured on Dazed) is credited on an image of what appears to be Ocean riding a dirtbike. Note the jacket that the bike rider is wearing – it looks awfully similar to the one worn by Ocean in this photo of him skipping stones on a muddy pond. The photographer for that was Francisco Soriano, the same artist behind Ocean’s livestream video.

THE BASEDGOD

Oakland rapper Lil B is pictured in the leak, with an extract of an interview between him and Ocean. This makes a lot of sense, given that photographer/director Nabil previously confirmed that he’d been involved with the interview and even shot Lil B for the magazine.

THE BLONDES

So what’s up with the word ‘blonde’ all over the magazine? Reddit, once again, has a theory: Ocean’s boysdontcry.co website is hosted by Blonde Racing LLC. Ocean is involved in this company to some extent. Could this be some sort of new venture/company/brand that Ocean is preparing to launch?

I'll just leave this here from FrankOcean

THE LAYOUT

People are speculating that, due to the layout of the screenshot on Tumblr, the magazine may come not just as a physical version, but as an app. “The screenshots looks like an app, due to the ever present white arrow at the bottom,” says Reddit user gboludare, “these images also look like a preview page for actual stories”.

Whether you believe the hype, feel that Ocean owes everyone an album, feel that he doesn’t owe anyone shit, or just couldn’t really care either way, what’s undeniable at this point is that new material from the reclusive R&B singer should be with us any day now. Either way, it’s fun to speculate.

Update 12/08: The image of a topless, tattooed guy is by photographer Alexandra Cabral.