It has been two years since Frank Ocean released Blonde, the long-awaited follow-up to his first album. Though the wait was excruciatingly long and sprinkled with expected release dates coming and going, the final product was everything that the fans had hoped for. The album was an instant hit, receiving widespread critical acclaim and topping charts all over the world, now certified platinum in the US. It’s hard to point at one aspect of the album as the reason that it was so successful and loved by fans. The production, the lyricism, the atmosphere, and the skits all emanated a feeling of depth, like the artist had truly poured his heart out into each second of this album. When combined with Frank’s raw talent, this dedication produced what is a standalone masterpiece, requiring no knowledge of his past work or his name to instill in its listeners a sense of loneliness, camaraderie, sadness, joy, lust, love, loss, and purpose, sometimes all at once. The music is minimalistic, as if stripping emotions to their core in an effort to understand them, and the deeply personal lyrics convey a sense of vulnerability that seeks to pull the listener in. Through these tools, the album aims to understand the self by getting to its core, a group of nostalgic personal stories lighting the way to a simple set of feelings, seeking to uncover what makes us us.

The minimalist motif of the album is apparent right from the first moments of the album. In ‘Nikes’, a simple drum pattern accompanies a plain, ambient melody, before a manipulated version of Ocean’s voice begins its ruminations on the frustration he feels toward rampant consumerism. Towards the second half of the song, a repeating guitar sequence replaces the drums as Ocean’s real voice begins a rap verse, the first trip down memory lane recounting meeting a lover for the first time. Before the listener has had a moment to reflect on the track, the opening lines of ‘Ivy’ grab their attention and turn it towards a different set of emotions altogether with “I thought that I was dreaming / When you said you loved me / The start of nothing / I had no chance to breathe air / I couldn’t see you coming”. This is the story of a heartbreaking breakup, the kind where the frustration between partners outmuscles the love, a love that continues to exist afterwards. Ocean’s “I could hate you now / It’s alright to hate me now / we both know that deep down / the feeling still deep down / is good”, repeated three times in the song, becomes progressively more emotional, culminating in him yelling the lines during the last sequence. The instruments are again muted, yet complementary to the vocals and lyrics. While there are no drums on the track, there is a bass guitar keeping a rhythm that mirrors the positives of such relationships in the subtle feeling it rewards the listener when it is finally recognized.

The negative emotions of the two opening tracks give way to the next trio, all of which are relatively positive. ‘Pink and White’, with its sounds of birds chirping, upbeat drums, cheerful piano, and the lyrics focused on the memory of a summer love, seems to find solace in the fact that the relationship happened at all. ‘Solo’ solidifies the positivity, this time focusing on the joys of being single. Though the instrumental is minimalistic again, the lyrics offer a more complex look at solitude, emphasizing the happiness of those that have it and the misery of those that don’t. The organ-like ambient sound fades the song out in the last 30 seconds while a single, quiet echo of the word ‘solo’ brings it to its conclusion. ‘Skyline To’ is a return to a relationship, but now with concern over the perception of time passing by so fast: “Summer’s not as long as it used to be / Every day comes like crazy”. The theme of relationships is continued in ‘Self Control’, a quick retelling of a time of self control lost and the longing to be with the lover after no room remained in their life for him. The theme of time passing, on the other hand, is picked up again in ‘Nights’, this time with a focus on a menial job causing days to merge into one another. Themes of a relationship are transient across the lyrics and responsibility comes to the forefront as a major motif.

Following two skits and shorter tracks, we get ‘White Ferrari’ and ‘Seigfried’, the lyrical content turning even more heavily in the direction of responsibility, which is now weighing the character down. In ‘White Ferrari’, reminiscing turns into present day reflections as Ocean sings about the possibility of moving to alleviate the lack of happiness in his relationship with his partner. On ‘Seigfried’, the instrumental is the darkest yet, an ambient and static-filled guitar being the sole sound that fills the spaces between Ocean’s extra-echoey vocals. The lyrics match the somber mood (I couldn’t gauge your fears / I can’t relate to my peers) as the focus now turns to internal conflict and the search for identity, with lines such as “maybe I’m a fool” and “I’m not brave” sprinkled throughout the song. A monologue at the end of the song exacerbates the feeling of being lost, bringing the album to the lowest point, mood-wise, while also serving to get as close as the album ever does to finding the essence of a person’s identity, their true ‘self’. With ‘Godspeed’ and ‘Futura Free’, however, the mood is lifted back up, with Ocean proclaiming his undying love for his partner (I will always love you / How I do) and a long sequence of recordings at the end of ‘Futura Free’, presumably from Ocean’s childhood, asking friends questions about their lives, perhaps alluding to the desire to get lost in childhood memories in times of deep despair and crisis. It remains unclear, and perhaps intentionally so, whether this desire for reminiscing is the right way to cope with the sense of being lost and overwhelmed that many of us feel in our own versions of ‘Seigfried’ times, but it certainly is a source of comfort. It’s almost as if there are two ends to the album: ‘Seigfried’ for those who find their true selves when lost, and ‘Futura Free’ for those who find their true selves in their memories.

The album is filled to the brim with complex emotions and ideas. Themes range from moving on after break-ups, to dealing with getting older, to struggling with identity and love. There is also no doubt that the technical prowess of Frank Ocean is put on full display: ‘Nights’ has 3 beat switches, ‘Ivy’ keeps the rhythm with a bass guitar, ‘Solo’ almost exclusively uses 1 instrument, and the last minute of ‘Self Control’ is Ocean harmonizing with himself. But what makes Blonde truly stand out from the pack, and the feature that may contribute heavily to the timelessness of the album, is that it creates a soundscape that feels deeply personal.

Whether the listener has lived it or not, the life being relayed by Ocean seems oddly familiar, striking a chord somewhere in the most human areas of the self. This quality is a direct consequence of the careful construction of every bite of sound on the record. Each note of each instrument is monumental, which is surely why there are so few of them in the first place. The only instruments that made the cut, including Ocean’s voice itself (manipulated or otherwise), were the ones that contributed in a necessary and fundamental way to the feeling that he wanted to convey. Everything else was stripped away. The empty but atmospheric soundscapes of Blonde are a brutally accurate reflection of what human emotions feel like: a whole lot of empty space, the lingering instruments of external events forming an outline for what is to be felt but never crossing into the realm of the words that form lasting impressions and guide those feelings one way or another. In this way, Blonde truly exemplifies perhaps the most important function of art by forcing the listener to become aware of their inner self, with an efficacy that self-help authors and psychotherapists could only dream of. It feels like the album knows you, and each time you hear a song from it, you’re falling into the arms of an old friend, their muffled ‘solo’ (4:00 on ‘Solo’), their wailing ambience (2:31 on ‘Self Control’), and their howls into the ether (3:16 on ‘White Ferrari’) all seeping into your deepest, darkest corners, evicting the despair of loneliness and heartbreak that resides there, leaving room only for the simplest feeling of comfort.

For more on lyrical analysis and messages hidden in the album, be sure to check out the podcast ‘Dissect’ on Spotify, the third season of which is dedicated solely to Frank’s discography, with in-depth of analysis of multiple songs from Blonde.