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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
discussion of Frank Ocean should go in the R&B cafe, not Hip Hops
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I actually puzzled over this a lot. Not the "café" part, as there is no R&B café, but whether or not Frank Ocean qualifies as hip-hop.
He certainly isn't R&B by any traditional definition. But he might be more "pop" or even, honestly, "experimental pop" than hip-hop.
That said, he is part of hip-hop culture, he raps in addition to singing, he cut his teeth with Odd Future, and fleshed out his career with Kanye and Jay-Z features. His album features the hardest bars Andre 3000 has rapped since Outkast dissolved, and he is black and funky. So... it's no stretch to call him hip-hop.
Basically, if Kanye is hip-hop, so is Frank. That's how I see it. Neither of them fit into the box sonically, and neither can R-A-P on the level of Danny Brown or Kendrick or blah blah. But they're both culturally hip-hop.
Fucking Beyoncé is culturally hip-hip at this point. Remember the '90s, when Timbaland started exploding R&B jizz all over crazy, spooky beats? Well, R&B changed when that shit happened.