Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (2012)

kudos for the street fighter ref at least

i think "lost" is really gorge

i think the whole album is

y'huh. end, & crack rock too.

9.467345624434352753677446734523666644666333

Bad Religion and Thinkin Bout You are my favorites.

i need more time with it... i think it might be one of those that reveals more stuff with repeated listens.

Bad Religion, Thinkin Bout You, Lost, Super Rich Kids, Sweet Life. Also I really like the transition from Bad Religion into Pink Matter.

"sweet life" is one of my least fav songs on the record

pilot jones, lost, forrest gump, sierra leone are all amazing

why least fav

I'm beginning to realise that full justice can't be given to this album when we have biblical weather conditions in this country...so cannot play again until the Barometer reads at least 75 degrees...I understand that could be quite some time...

I live in England. I'm not waiting a decade to enjoy this.

Thinking of emigrating...no really...

this was okay

honestly seems a shame to ever listen to it again

i'll put it at 8th in a year end list, no one will know, it'll be fine

yeah Super Rich Kids justifies the hype all by itself imo.

love the kinda 80s Anita Baker vibe on some tracks.

I find myself loving Forrest Gump, much as I don't want to

Yesterday at HMV, they told me that the Frank Ocean album was not officially out until Tuesday, meaning it couldn't be displayed until then, but since it was already selling on iTunes they could sell it if a customer specifically asked about it.

So, while Channel Orange is officially now out, the status of just how out it is remains rather murky for the time being. Seems appropriate.

its physical CD release is and was always planned to be the 17th, the digital release on the 10th was kind of decided on (or at least announced) at the last minute, presumably to beat bootleggers to the punch and/or capitalize on all the media interest in the week before.

It was out on the shelves at my local Barnes & Noble over the weekend, but I wasn't about to pay $17 for it.

this is like a more boring ryan leslie.

oof, pretty damning stuff right there

maybe too harsh!

i mean i LIKE r-les but a comparison like that just brings the whole thing back down to earth

I agree with Ronan I think.

supposedly the digital-first release was planned in advance to emulate Watch The Throne's release structure, an explanation I'd normally side-eye the fuck out of but that I'll accept from someone who actually, yeah, probably would be wanting to do that

I like R-Les too! But to me this has too much of that sort of vague Stevie Wonder "real soul" vibe without any truly great hooks or beats (largely). It's not awful or anything, just like, can you really love this album? At least Leslie gets a bit funky sometimes and does some interesting stuff with melodies.

I listened twice this morning and it was sort of pleasant at best.

i like 'bad religion' and 'pyramids' and 'super rich kids,' none of the rest really grabs or moves me. 'nostalgia ultra' was so hooky and this is not

also there is lots of blind adulation for this

sfj has a review in the nyer today where he says it revolutionizes r&b or something

“Channel ORANGE” reinvigorates R. & B. by flouting the rules of the genre. Like the writer Sheila Heti and the filmmaker Lena Dunham, Ocean is deciding what it means to talk about friendship, drugs, love, and sex, and is setting the parameters for shame and regret in a world in which failure is simply a way of saying hello. ♦

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2012/07/23/120723crmu_music_frerejones#ixzz20nComiSo

haha that paragraph is like DESIGNED to launch 250 ilm posts

lets please not take the bait

"in a world in which failure is simply saying hello... one man chose to set the parameters for shame and regret."

R. & B.

coming soon to a theater near you

Michael Fassbender is Frank Ocean.

lol yes.

"But, under the mainstream, there’s another cohort gaining popularity. In Toronto, the Weeknd—mostly the efforts of a musician named Abel Tesfaye—released three full-length albums on the Web in 2011 that drove people almost uniformly crazy."

:/

"Other acts that once would have been called indie are making similar music, such as Chicago’s How to Dress Well and England’s Kindness"

:/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/ :/

ha i was actually starting to feel some relief that FO had become a big enough story on his own that we wouldn't have the obligatory overview of that 'scene' in every article

Does the 'scene' have a name yet or can we just call it the 'scene,' with quotes.

i think the preferred ilm dickhead nomenclature is "r&b concrète"

nah, that's something else entirely

Lordy.

Meanwhile, Chris Molanphy's latest piece on the charts and urban music is excellent; read and discuss. I post here because of his own concluding paragraphs:

On this week's upcoming album chart, Chris Brown is expected to be ushered out of the No. 1 spot by a country album, the Zac Brown Band's Uncaged. But in the media, all eyes are on the album slated to debut at No. 2—Frank Ocean's official debut album Channel Orange, which is expected to move more than 120,000 copies, an impressive number for an artist with no big radio hits to speak of. Like so many best-sellers these days, Ocean's album is getting its boost less from his music than from the news cycle: the press frenzy earlier this month over his revelation that he'd fallen in love with a man when he was younger. It boosted awareness of Ocean broadly and may well have multiplied his album's opening sales.

A hit album is great, but is there any chance we can get this dude a hit on both urban and pop radio to go with it? Like many coastal cultural critics, I am rooting for Ocean for reasons of personal politics. But I'm also rooting for him simply because he's a talented singer who might help bring black music back to the center of the pop conversation, where it belongs.

Frankly I appreciate the honesty from Chris re: personal politics. The sense of being obligated to like it (and therefore being even more disappointed with the end results) is evident here and elsewhere.

i think the preferred ilm dickhead nomenclature is "r&b concrète"

how about "avant la lecher".

A hit album is great, but is there any chance we can get this dude a hit on both urban and pop radio to go with it?

no

reinvigorates R. & B. by flouting the rules of the genre

But, under the mainstream, there’s another cohort gaining popularity. In Toronto, the Weeknd—mostly the efforts of a musician named Abel Tesfaye—released three full-length albums on the Web in 2011 that drove people almost uniformly crazy

Other acts that once would have been called indie are making similar music, such as Chicago’s How to Dress Well and England’s Kindness

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MRin2qg1dlg/SawiOI7F-II/AAAAAAAAADk/UucvxfqkgoI/s1600/0_202fd_ea005bd5_XL.gif
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MRin2qg1dlg/SawiOI7F-II/AAAAAAAAADk/UucvxfqkgoI/s1600/0_202fd_ea005bd5_XL.gif
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MRin2qg1dlg/SawiOI7F-II/AAAAAAAAADk/UucvxfqkgoI/s1600/0_202fd_ea005bd5_XL.gif
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MRin2qg1dlg/SawiOI7F-II/AAAAAAAAADk/UucvxfqkgoI/s1600/0_202fd_ea005bd5_XL.gif
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MRin2qg1dlg/SawiOI7F-II/AAAAAAAAADk/UucvxfqkgoI/s1600/0_202fd_ea005bd5_XL.gif
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MRin2qg1dlg/SawiOI7F-II/AAAAAAAAADk/UucvxfqkgoI/s1600/0_202fd_ea005bd5_XL.gif
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MRin2qg1dlg/SawiOI7F-II/AAAAAAAAADk/UucvxfqkgoI/s1600/0_202fd_ea005bd5_XL.gif

really don't get the kindness thing. they actually stole the melody from the theme tune to eastenders for a track. i mean, they did that.

no way

No, Kindness covered the theme tune. Or do covers count as stealing now?