Frank Ocean gave us the song of the summer. In the middle of winter.

If we’re getting technical, it was actually Calvin Harris, but everyone knows who Slide really belongs to.

Less than a year after Ocean’s fans were years deep into a drought of new music, this song’s release heralded something new.

Obviously the drought had been broken the summer before with the respective releases of “Endless” and “Blonde”, but even with those albums out, it was hard to get one’s hopes up about any of this stuff. He could have just as easily slunk back into the shadows for the next couple years while he put together his next project.

Slide’s release proved that wasn’t happening. Ocean was back.

Enter Blonded Radio, Ocean’s periodic show on Apple’s streaming service. Every couple weeks listeners would be treated to an eclectic playlist of curated music that led up to a new release by the artist.

The songs in question: Chanel, Biking, Lens, RAF (Two filthy guest verses) and Provider. A version of Endless highlight Slide On Me snuck in there too with a Young Thug verse tacked on, but the addition was pretty underwhelming so let’s just stick to these.

Most of the tracks would be played multiple times and appear in different permutations. These additions came in the form of extra instrumentation or entire guest verses by Ocean’s famous friends. The whole thing represented a sort of “making-good” on the phrase Ocean left fans with back in the summer of 2015: “I got two versions. I got twoooo versions.”.

Before this summer, those words served as a bitter reminder that at the heart of this music is just a person, Someone with insecurities, prone to writers block or self-doubt.

Looking back, it could have only gone this way.

Looking back, it’s surprising that fans were so caught off guard by the whole thing at all. The most important quality Ocean’s work offers the listener is a vulnerability and compassion that justifies art’s existence in the first place.

As of now there’s no word on an upcoming release, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve seen all this before.

The string of impressive singles here evokes the year leading up to Channel Orange, as we were treated to song after song without much of an explanation, with some of them taking their rightful place in the context of the album upon its release.

Back at his FYF performance in L.A. he mentioned wanting to include a cover of Steve Monite’s ebullient disco track Only You on an episode of Blonded, so who knows if this story is even over. What’s clear is that the Frank Ocean is back, and he’s showing no signs of slowing.