Frank Ocean- Channel Orange

R&B music is going through a serious revival at the moment.  There have been a lot of great albums that have been released this year in the R&B genre.  One of the albums was "Channel Orange" by Frank Ocean.  This is a landmark album for the genre simply due to the fact that Frank Ocean was able to break barriers as one of the first artist in this modern era of urban music to come out of the closet.  This was a huge shocker to the music industry, there are many closeted artist and compared to the seventies the public is more accepting of the LGBT lifestyle than they were forty years ago.

Frank Ocean shows on this album that he is one of the most talented artist in this new generation of music.  Listening to many of the tracks a listener can tell that Def Jam let him experiment a lot with the album.  Channel Orange is very cohesive, one of the standout moments on the album for me was "Sweet Life."  Ocean showed a unique storytelling ability in his lyrics, backed by instrumentation that complimented the setting of his storytelling, and it also was produced by the Neptunes.  The Neptunes the production team of Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams have been missing in the Hip Hop genre for the last couple of years.  They had a very distinct sound throughout their heyday, but the problem with having a distinct sound in music is there is little to no room, to expand your sound.  Another standout moment was a song called "Super Rich Kids" featuring Earl Sweatshirt a rapper in the Odd Future collective.  The song has a very slow, solemn piano note throughout most of the song that Earl is rapping over, and Frank is singing over.  The song has an odd sound, but very addictive.  I was not the biggest fan of his single "Thinkin Bout You."  I cannot give a specific reason why I dont like the song I just dont. 

If you ask me about interludes in music, I can tell you its a love-hate relationship.  The reason is simply due to the fact that there are a lot of interludes that are plain stupid, and the mainstream have killed interludes in hip hop music.  The interludes between tracks on the Channel Orange album were actually fitting for the occassion.  The feeling you get listening to Channel Orange is that your listening to a tv network, and the programming is all of the tracks on the album.  If your an audio learner then this album is a biography of a man who has been through a lot and wants you to look at things through his eyes.  I love this album and I think this is an album we will speaking of in the next few years, simply due to the fact that there are so many forgotten albums in this era in this genre.  Whoever Frank Ocean decides to sleep with, or what he does with his life is none of my business, he makes great music.  I can definately recommend this album to any fan of music.