As we are all reminded on virtually a daily basis, Frank Ocean doesn’t release music that much. It’s been just shy of seven years since his last album, and – apart from a few stand-alone singles – we are yet to receive a new batch of Frocean tracks. However, one particular person has taken matters into their own hands, producing a gaggle of AI-generated Frank Ocean tracks and flogging them for thousands on Discord.
Two Songs with the titles “Steer It” and “The Line” materialised online at the end of April, supposedly leaks of original recordings by Ocean. However, Motherboard have now reported that the songs were AI generated fakes created by a Discord user named mourningassassin. In an accompanying interview, the scammer claimed that they’ve made $13,000 CAD selling the tracks to fans via Discord, which is just under £8,000.
When “Steer It” and “The Line” appeared online, a third track reportedly named “These Days” also materialised. Since then, mourningassassin has claimed that “These Days” was a legitimate Frank Ocean song, and they leaked it to convince fans that “Steer It” and “The Line” were also authentic tracks and in turn make more money selling the fakes (still following???). This is of course an unverified claim from the Discord scammer and not confirmed by Frank Ocean or his team.
Frank Ocean fans on Discord and Reddit have since been alerted to mourningassassin’s actions and are seemingly on high alert for any more scams. It comes after a tough few weeks for them – a music video for a scrapped collaboration with Rosalía was leaked online at the beginning of May, and we can’t forget his beautiful and misunderstood (?) headline set at Coachella from earlier this Spring.
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