To say Frank Ocean’s new album is long-awaited is probably the biggest understatement you could make in 2016. He's dropped teasers, like posting an image stamped with library book due-dates; run a stream of surprise visual album “Endless”, which began to feature snippets of the new release; and finally dropped the video for first track “Nikes”.
Overnight he released Blond, which is available to stream on Apple Music. According to a page in Boys Don’t Cry, the 360-page magazine he also released, the album’s contributors include Arca, The Beatles, David Bowie, Brian Eno and Elliott Smith along with Beyoncé, Andre 3000, Kanye and James Blake.
Boys Don’t Cry (previously believed to be the album’s title) features Kanye, Lil B, artist Tom Sachs and Dazed contributors including Viviane Sassen, Wolfgang Tillmans and Harley Weir. The magazine was given away with a copy of the album in four cities across the world – LA, NYC, London and Chicago. The release not only of an album, but a print title and visual project demonstrates Ocean’s discipline-bending desire to express his art in more ways than the traditional favoured by musicians.
“I had the time of my life making all of this. Thank you all,” wrote Ocean on his Tumblr. “Especially those of you who never let me forget I had to finish. Which is basically every one of ya’ll. Haha. Love you.”
