Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (2012)

I'm all for anyone digging into the Tonyies catalog or his first couple solo efforts tho.

Maybe Soul Jazz should do a compilation.

eww

haha

saadiq's album last year was only ok not great but "good man" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> anything ocean has ever made

yeah that was kind of what I was thinking.

"Good Man" was aight, I guess. Didn't really stick with me at all. Probably the best song he's made in years, but hardly a shadow on peak Saadiq.

smh at lex tho

ocean's appeal has another few pertinent layers before you get to the basic fact of soul/funk and link it to offputtingly on-the-nose saadiq retro

at that kind of face value you might as well tell 'pyramids' fans to check for the bangles

this is like a generation down the line for whom the stevie wonderesque sound is almost a kind of flimsy utopia in itself, affluence, luxury, seductive and empty beverly hills paradises ('sweet life') where all cannot be as it seems maaan. this is that n.e.r.d thing of being a dreamy sk8r stoner dork sat in their room flicking through the channels, mediated referential realities ("my tv ain't in hd thats too real") tornados, fighter jets, africa, monks, diamonds, drug addiction like a game show

i think that's a really good summation of what's off-putting about the general aesthetic to me

there's a weird fetishisation of luxury in order to say it's empty at first hand, a bit of a repulsive having one's cake and eating it vibe

yeah no doubt

"Good Man" was aight, I guess. Didn't really stick with me at all.

― The Reverend, Thursday, August 16, 2012 3:02 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cmon now

It's one of those songs I heard, went "this is good" and promptly forgot about.

i recommend a revisit, that almost made my top ten that year

xps I think it's important to remember all the Ladera Heights stuff is on the outside looking in even when it's in first person. Obv that's not his actual background.

whenever I think Saadiq bores me I replay the second half of Stone Rollin' and think ahhhh shit

Stone Rollin was on my top ten of last year. Only familiar with the Tonys biggest hits. Still need to go back to saadiq's other solo records--where to start?

instant vintage...

^^^^^^^>

yeah to be honest i have no use for saadiq after instant vintage, which is brilliant. channel orange > saadiq since instant vintage

here's a weird fetishisation of luxury in order to say it's empty at first hand, a bit of a repulsive having one's cake and eating it vibe

― lex pretend, Thursday, August 16, 2012 2:39 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think it's more complicated than that. what i like about ocean is that he's pretty non-judgmental about his characters, sort of just presenting them dispassionately.

Exactly. He has reintroduced the role of the distanced observer-narrator to modern R&B. Even when the narrator's in the grip of passion, there's a certain distance or resignation involved, more often than not. Cf. Thinkin Bout You.

yes but you can't lump him in with the weeknd if you put it like that

I'm definitely not lumping him in with the Weeknd. Weeknd is the anti-Terius, always shameful about his involvement in debauchery, but caught up in desire nonetheless. Frank knows desire and loss intimately enough to describe it from a distance. He strikes me as wiser than the both of them. Perhaps even a bit too intelligent for his own good.

not sure what that means. like, too dispassionate?

Not too dispassionate, I think. He strikes me as very passionate, but wary? As in he's keeping his distance. Part of the joy of Terius is how he embraces everything, you know? That sort of thoughtless abandon. Frank analyzes everything and packs his metaphors carefully. But he may be missing out on a bit of fun, if you catch my drift.

i do. there isn't much libidinal abandon in frank ocean. suspect that reticence helps make him accessible to indie audiences.

Definitely. That's the sad part of Channel Orange's success. Indie audiences and critics embrace him because they recognize the aesthetic as one that it is easy to legitimize in a way that, say, Ciara's Ride is not. That's reason enough to resist the mainstream coronation of Frank as the "savior" of R&B. That being said, though, Frank's stoic R&B does feel like a breath of fresh air right now.

this all makes him sound like the r&b joni mitchell

I would not define Joni Mitchell as stoic though.

He could do worse.

oh he does do worse

lol

i don't think he's reintroduced any particular role to r&b - dispassionate character studies are plentiful surely? and from what i recall lots of channel orange involved ocean getting caught up in feelings so...

before she started to suck Ciara mastered a kind of detachment.

oh there's definitely more third person narrative on this album than any recent r&b album i can think of

or second person too, i guess, non-first person

CIARA HAS NOT STARTED TO SUCK >:(

I'll need some examples of those other recent detached R&B personas, I think. And he's certainly caught up in feelings, but always addressing them from a certain distance, I think. This is the guy who chooses to reveal his love for another man through a Forrest Gump metaphor, after all. It doesn't soften the impact, but the slightly ludicrous comparison keeps the overwhelming emotions at bay.

I mean, Basic Instinct was Ciara's most consistent album but lacked any ASTOUNDING highs - Ride and Gimme Dat were good but not top-tier singles. 'Sweat' is greater cause for concern. We'll see how this next album pans out.

"ride" and "gimmie dat" and "wants for dinner" and "i run it" and "heavy rotation" = astounding highs, not to mention "deuces" and "blauw" and "shut em up"

"sweat" is in my top 10 singles of 2012 easily, way better than eg anything on channel orange. can't help it if i like my music to contain actual energy

i wasn't saying it in comparison to FO. just in her own career as much as those are highs for the album they don't feel like highs for a career that has 'goodies' and 'oh' and '1 2 step' and 'like a boy' and 'promise' and hell even 'echo' and 'i'm on' and 'high price' and the o.g. missy-less 'work'

I'm definitely not lumping him in with the Weeknd. Weeknd is the anti-Terius, always shameful about his involvement in debauchery, but caught up in desire nonetheless. Frank knows desire and loss intimately enough to describe it from a distance. He strikes me as wiser than the both of them. Perhaps even a bit too intelligent for his own good.

― (professor) (longneck), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:04 (59 minutes ago) Bookmark

sorry, and you are right, i was just poking fun at lex's nascent effort to create a grand diabolical theory of stuff he doesnt like

I'll need some examples of those other recent detached R&B personas, I think. And he's certainly caught up in feelings, but always addressing them from a certain distance, I think. This is the guy who chooses to reveal his love for another man through a Forrest Gump metaphor, after all.

otm. distance is key to frank's persona at this point. he distances himself by means of observation, reminiscence, irony, regret, understatement, disengagement, etc. relative to his debut, channel orange is focused much more on what happened, and especially what happened to other people, than on the narrator's state of mind in the moment. he often seems to be watching his own life as a clip show on tv. it's only towards the back of the album (esp. on "bad religion") that he catches up with his own feelings in the here and now.

can't say how common such strategies are in modern R&B, but the result is compelling to me independent of context.

There's something to your interpretation; it explains why musically (e.g. sad organ) "Bad Religion" does sound like the finale and really couldn't go anywhere in the sequence. Unfortunately at least a third of the album is for me innocuous.

Yeah. And Bad Religion is the song where he addresses his "disguises" - interestingly enough.

I'd say Ciara is an interesting case btw. Totally agree that she has a semi-detached persona. I think that persona is what has at least partially kept her from blowing up like Rihanna (who totally gives in to her roles and fills them like no other), and that this may be why the Terius/Ciara collaboration of Basic Instinct didn't quite work out commercially even though I love that album to death. Terius is a bit too in your face for Ciara to carry his lyrics over convincingly. She hasn't really found the right way to sell that detachment yet, at least not post-crunk&b. Frank obviously has.

rihanna has to give into her role and fill them entirely because she's just a cipher with no interiority herself

haha I'd question Rihanna's acting abilities, period.

Hardly. Her instincts are impeccable. She picked Umbrella and made it her own, in a way that Terius couldn't have foreseen. It pretty much sums up the essence of her relationship with CB since the song came out.

yeah to be honest i have no use for saadiq after instant vintage, which is brilliant. channel orange > saadiq since instant vintage

I just want to point out that As Ray Ray is a very dope and very underrated album.

<I>She hasn't really found the right way to sell that detachment yet, at least not post-crunk&b. Frank obviously has.</i>

Women are supposed to be emotional and change themselves to fit the moment, men are supposed to be rational and hold themselves together, says the says the record-buying public?