They are textured, shape-shifting, introspective mood pieces that unfurl in stream-of-consciousness fashion. Both Blonde and Endless, a 45-minute visual album that features Ocean constructing a staircase to a soundtrack of ethereal avant-pop, bask in ambiguity. But much like how, five years later, Bowie had reined in his theatrics and begun to place a greater emphasis on enhancing his craft, diving into ambient electronica on his albums “Heroes” and Low, Ocean has made his sound and songwriting his priority. When Ocean publicly addressed his sexual orientation, he drew comparisons to David Bowie, who made a headline-making proclamation that he was bisexual in 1972, when the legendary musician was at the peak of his brashness portraying his androgynous alien alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The reticent artist prefers to let his art speak for itself, and with Blonde, Endless and Boys Don’t Cry, that art moves in mysterious, nuanced ways. Grand-gesture activism and sloganeering anthems are not Ocean’s bag. But it’s doubtful we’ll see him holding a Pride flag or penning his “Same Love” or “Born This Way” anytime soon. In the three-plus years he’s been out of the spotlight, the musician has become a contemporary queer icon, a role model – “My hope is that the babies born these days will inherit less of the bullshit than we did,” he wrote in that famous Tumblr letter. Despite being an R&B record, Channel Orange quickly became a talking point in the conversation about homophobia in rap music, and Ocean established a legion of LGBT fans, many of whom had never heard of him before he shared his story. Listeners won’t find an equivalent to “Bad Religion” on Blonde – at least not an obvious one. It may be the most impassioned, devastating plea from one man to another ever recorded. It’s the sound of a man breaking down, buckling under the weight of his secrets and self-deception. “This unrequited love/To me it’s nothing but a one-man cult and cyanide in a Styrofoam cup/I could never make him love me,” he laments from the back of a cab, strings swelling around his plaintive vocals. In the searing, organ-led confessional “Bad Religion,” Ocean poured his heart out not to a priest, but to his taxi driver.
Never had an acclaimed artist working in R&B and hip-hop spoken so bravely and openly, and when Channel Orange arrived, tracks like “Thinkin Bout You” (with the line “My eyes don’t shed tears, but boy they pour when I’m thinkin’ ’bout you”) and “Forrest Gump” (“you run my mind, boy”) carried deeper meaning. A sprawling and gorgeous blend of R&B, hip-hop, rock, pop and funk, the album came stocked with vivid, poetic accounts of unchecked materialism and addiction, but its showstoppers were songs that seemed to chronicle Ocean’s own heartache, specifically his one-sided affection for another man. Ocean’s lauded 2012 debut, Channel Orange, marked a watershed in the music industry.
But along with Endless, the visual album that preceded it, and Boys Don’t Cry, the magazine that accompanies it, Blonde is the artist’s boldest, queerest project to date. The track, like the encounter, is fleeting, and it’s the only explicit reference Ocean makes to a male partner or love interest over the course of the record’s 60 minutes. “I know you don’t need me right now/And to you it’s just a late night out,” sings Ocean. His date talks too much and is thinking short term. After this new acquaintance takes him to a “gay bar,” their incompatibility becomes apparent. In the short interlude “Good Guy,” Ocean describes a blind date with someone he met through a mutual friend. The word “gay” shows up just once on Blonde, the long-awaited sophomore album from Frank Ocean.