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Originally Posted by guest
done the flip on the frank ocean record...immaculately produced and he has a beautiful voice but the songwriting is so, so weak, the whole thing is massively undercooked. the vocal melodies just follow the chord progressions which hardly differentiate themselves among the songs which all drag along at the same tempo. still exponentially more interesting than his last record (the adoration of which made no sense to me at all). it's very nice to try to make an ambitious, personal record, but if it's so abstruse as to be completely impersonal and frankly not nearly as interesting as so many other artists operating in the same sphere without the baggage of a self-constructed myth then it's sort of obsolete...
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Interesting take.
I can't say I agree. I do think it's a pretty goddamn slow record, and I wouldn't mind hearing a bit more diversity in meter and time signature. But you've given me a few things to chew on. Thanks for sharing. Really.
I've liked it since the beginning, but it felt almost like a Radiohead album at first... (you know, one of those slow, plodding Radiohead albums that sounds good at times, but when taken as a whole can be almost sleep-inducing). The more I listen, though, the more moments of revelation I find. It does seem to push itself forward fairly well, at a stately if subdued pace. It's a VERY welcome remedy to the vast majority of hip-hop releases that have come out this year, so many of which have been utterly without color or texture or hue, resorting instead to mid-tempo semi-banger after mid-tempo semi-banger, and god DAMN that shit gets old. So compared to all but two or three hip-hop and hip-hop adjacent albums this year's had to offer, it sounds like high art.
Regarding Channel Orange, no offense, but if you weren't into that album, I'm not sure why you'd even bother with this one, let alone hope or expect to like it. I guess I'm not sure why you're fucking with Frank at all. Channel Orange is his only proper album (pre-Blonde and Endless). He has ONE other release and it's a mixtape. If you don't like cO, you don't like 100% of his album-output, so ... why bother?
Personally, I think Channel Orange is a great record. I don't think it's
as great as a lot of folks do... In the grand scheme of the decade's great R&B albums, it absolutely shrinks and pales in comparison to Black Messiah. But it was certainly one of the best albums of 2012. I wasn't entirely on board at first either. It took several listens for me to appreciate the production and writing, but it definitely made a lasting impression eventually.
In general, though I love Frank Ocean, I'm not usually in the kind of mindset where I can put such slow, meditative, often downer-heavy music (unless it's ambient guitar shit). I listen to Blonde in fragments. I can't sit still for the entire thing. But when I do listen, to it or to Channel Orange (or Nostalgia Ultra. for that matter) I always hear something amazing.
Long story short, stop listening to Frank Ocean, since you don't like Frank Ocean.
