SAM HOCKLEY-SMITH: For years, I imagined that Frank Ocean’s brawl with Chris Brown happened in the parking lot of a Staples office supply store, not the Los Angeles Staples Center, where it actually went down. In retrospect, the Staples Center makes a whole lot more sense, until you remember that this is Frank Ocean we’re talking about, and him going to Xerox a bunch of copies of his zine that he never released, or going to buy a few more spiral-bound notebooks to write some lyrics doesn’t seem that far off.

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That’s the thing about Frank, he comes off like a genuine, regular dude, who also happens to be way more smart and talented than most other genuine, regular dudes (no offense to any genuine, regular dudes reading this — let’s get a beer sometime). It’s for this reason that we put Frank on the hook for so much. It’s not actually that weird that he hasn’t released anything in four years. It’s not normal for a musician to wait that long, but it’s not like he’s completely upending the process of music making as we know it.

I have this theory that we’re all mixing up frustration with outrage. They’re similar enough emotions, but not really the same thing. Are we frustrated that Frank Ocean hasn’t released new music in four years, or are we outraged that he didn’t capitalize on his fame the way we hoped he would? It’s a little bit of a why-didn’t-I-think-of-that moment. Like, if Frank Ocean gets to break all the rules, why can’t I?

The answer is that I, we — or most of us, anyway — are not as talented as Frank Ocean, and breaking rules only appeals to those that didn’t really give a shit about them in the first place. The thing we tend to forget is that Frank, Earl Sweatshirt, and the rest of Odd Future had to weather the weight of a full media storm that was largely unprecedented at the time. We imposed narratives and tracked every move of these guys before they even had a chance to decide what moves they actually wanted to make. They broke rules just by not following the guidelines we set in front of them.

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Frank Ocean has already given us two solid albums, a smattering of guest verses, and some great writing credits. We want Frank to be the artist we think we would be if we were in his place. He’s not us though, he’s him — which means that he can put a video of himself building some furniture or whatever it is he’s doing, and not only will we watch it, we’ll dissect it without admitting that the worst thing Frank Ocean could possibly do is what we all want him to do: play by the arbitrary rules we’ve created.