What were your first impressions?



I liked it. But I didn’t listen to him a whole bunch until just a few years ago, because in Season 1 of Dissect, I started taking requests for later seasons. Of course Kanye was a popular request that I ultimately choose, but Frank Ocean was second, and was clearly the frontrunner in terms of suggestions for Season 3 by like…I mean, even if you combined everyone else in the world, he still beat them out like three to one. Frank Ocean vs. everyone else.

So the same kind of passion that listeners and his fans were admitting made me consider his music more than I was at that time. It wasn’t until then that I really really dove into him and came out the other side doing a season on him. I already had loved Kendrick personally, and I already had loved Kanye personally. Frank Ocean was a different experience because I came into him almost as a newbie, and I was pushed to listen to him.

Of course, I fell in love with his music and through my dissection came to really appreciate him as an artist on the level of Kanye and Kendrick. But it was all a new experience.

What makes Frank's music worthy of such dedicated time and deep focus?



His meticulousness is pretty notorious in the industry and that really translates to his music. The stories that he’s telling on Channel Orange are so beautiful, deep and meaningful...and really thought through, which I didn’t catch on first, second, or even third listen. It wasn’t until I really dove into these things that I discovered how complex and intricate his stories are.

Then on Blonde, specifically the production was incredible to me. The level of detail that went into the sound of that album just kinda has blown me away as I’m getting into him. It sounds super minimal, but when you really start to listen to all the small details in the production, it’s like….it tells me why he took, it makes sense why he took four years to create this. Because you don’t get to that level of detail without experimenting over and over with different sounds and different versions. I read somewhere that he had fifty different versions for “White Ferrari”. Which just goes to speak on how meticulously and thoughtful he is about his art. That’s what has really struck me about his art.

I don’t know if he’s searching for perfection, but he’s searching for a level of perfection that is personal to him. He’s searching for a feeling and an emotion and he’s not going to compromise until it’s perfect to him. That’s been really really great to dig into.