“The visual album is a hybrid medium between music video and film; like music video, it promotes an audio album, and like film, it is conceived as a whole work of art. The visual album borrows formats, techniques and theories from genres, such as direct address and the voyeuristic gaze, and uses them in a hybrid manner.” Abstract from the article “The visual album as a hybrid art-form: A case study of traditional, personal, and allusive narratives in Beyoncé”, by Cara Harrison (2014).

In August 2016, Frank Ocean, an American rapper known for his critically acclaimed and award winning album Channel ORANGE (2012), ended his four-year hiatus away from the media. A week after a sudden and quick appearance in a mysterious live-streaming video set in an unidentified warehouse posted on his boysdontcry.com website, which draw all media and fans attention to what he was finally going to release, Ocean reappeared and assembled, piece by piece, a wooden spiral staircase. Meanwhile, his new work was being debuted on speakers in the back of the shed.

The video then became a visual album, released the day after the end of the broadcast, called Endless, along with his third album Blonde, featuring other 13 brand new tracks. Although the visual narrative created by Ocean was dazzled by the release of the more-traditional-album-format Blonde, it was a way for him to break free from his old record label and also, at the time, a media format that music industry was starting to go in to really create unique atmospheres that allied to the melody, rhythm and lyrics of the song, enrich the user experience.