Morgan Parker: As a writer who always wanted to be in a punk band, I revel in conversations about the blurred lines between mediums. I’ve been super excited by what I think of as “the rise of the narrative album,” a la Lemonade and good kid, m.a.a.d city. The album as journey, complete with all the rules of fiction: conflict, transformation, writing, and falling action. Because isn’t everything storytelling? Don’t we possess literacy for sound or images as we do music? What’s the difference between poetry and performance art; spoken word and rap; sculpting and composing? Frank Ocean the artist is in the footsteps of Glenn Ligon, Lorna Simpson, and Noah Purifoy. As a poet, his lineage includes Fred Moten, Terrance Hayes, and Jericho Brown. He tells stories with the tenderness of Gayl Jones, the complexity of Zadie Smith, and the straightforwardness of Alice Walker. Like any good writer, his is an art fueled by absorbing and observing.

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Danez Smith: I don’t wanna offer Frank any special “literary” privilege without also extending it to other black songwriters. The line between lyrics and poetry is so thin it doesn’t exist, and as a writer it feels good to sit down with Frank or Kendrick or Jamila Woods or Badu and be immersed in some music where you know the song was banging even before it was lifted off the page into something sonic. For me, I’ve always come to Frank Ocean’s music firstly for the lyrics. From Nostalgia, Ultra on, Ocean has offered us words so damn plus and holy and silly — it’s undeniable that he is one of the best songwriters writing right now. When he compared the nana to Majin Boo on “Pink Matter,” I knew homie was really up to some shit. When I heard “Forrest Gump” I was finally at home in a mainstream record like my little black gay ass had never been before. On this new joint, I’m interested in when he chooses to assign a gendered pronoun to the love interest in his songs. While I haven’t caught any explicit male pronouns in the work, some of the more vulnerable tracks do have an absence of feminine pronouns that make me curious as to how Frank will continue to voice or not voice his sexuality (not that he has to at all).

I’m also curious to see what Frank can do in another medium. The letters he’s written have been great. Shit, it’s one of my favorite Tumblr pages to go to. Even when I don’t “like” a song of his, I still respect the work. The thoughts always feel complete, even if they are fragments or interludes. He writes with a poet’s eye, blends the colloquial with the fantastic with the gospel in almost masterful ways that create something lush. I’m excited to listen to him for a while and to see how he grows. I fear we may be giving him an idol status a tad too early. Don’t get me wrong, homie is tight, but he’s still young in his career. I hope that hunger never disappears, that he takes his time to be curious, to allow himself all the necessary failures on the way to making a masterpiece, and if he’s down, I’m sure someone would be happy to collect all dem lyrics and release a book of poems.