A History of Video Games In Frank Ocean’s Career In a career filled with sinous decisions and a knack for deconstructing social barriers, there’s been an innocent variable throughout Frank Ocean’s music, his love for video games. From galactic backdrops on “Saturday Night Live” to project openers, video games have become a staple in a career that’s virtually unpredictable. Frank’s love for video games dates back to the days of the Dreamcast playing Street Fighter and have developed into having a fully fledged radio show in one of the biggest titles of all time.

As a big Street Fighter fan, Frank paid homage in his Twitter bio to “Yoga Flame”, a special attack used by the character Dhalsim in Street Fighter II.





Frank’s Tumblr is filled with pictures of Street Fighter, Playstation logos, Pacman and Nintendo pictures.

Frank’s first project, “nostalgia, ULTRA” is a “labour of love” as he calls it, filled with days of romance he’ll never get back. He stitches the project together using classic video games and cassette player sounds to accurately reflect a period of time in his life filled with discovery and wonder. From the sun orange M3 E30 (he found on a BMW forum) hugging the lush greenery to the vibrant cover of Coldplay’s “Strawberry Swing”, Frank creates an atmosphere which oozes out the sentimentality of his boyhood.

The project starts off with the track “street fighter”, just one of the few 1990s video games references.

Track 8 “goldeneye” references the 1997 video game released for the Nintendo 64.

Track 13: “soul calibur” references the legendary game referenced in 1995 by Namco for the Dreamcast.





On the first track of 2012′s “channel ORANGE” “Start”, Frank begins the album off in a smokey atmosphere as the Playstation 1 startup sound smoothly chimes in. Just as as he did with nostalgia, ULTRA, he references Street Fighter, this time sampling sounds from the game’s character selection menu.

Frank wearing a Street Fighter II shirt at a Terry Richardson photoshoot in 2012.



Hosted by Seth McFarlane, Frank Ocean made his Saturday Night Live debut on September 15th, 2012. Appearing through cyberpunk lights and a backdrop of vintage arcade games, Ocean took stage with guitarist John Mayer and played ‘Thinkin Bout You’ and ‘Pyramids’.

Some of the games present were Galaga and Street Fighter. Frank also mentioned Galaga on Odd Future’s “Oldie” rapping “get me a Persian rug where the centere looks like Galaga”.

2016′s Blonde is a burgeoning freedom of self-discovery. A forest full of narratives telling Frank’s trip from adolescence into adulthood. Frank steers away from Hollywood like stories as he did with Channel Orange tracks like “Lost”, “Monks” and “Pyramids” and chose to bleed his personal experiences into the project. This artistic choice resulted in less cultural references to movies, video games and entertainment unlike his previous projects. Instead, Blonde focus more on lanmdark moments, and an overall rumination on identity.

Track 15 on the project is titled “Seigfried”. Frank debuted this track in the summer of 2013 in the midst of a German crowd in Munich. As the guitar strummed and the lyrics were sung for the first time, the world came to be know this as ‘Brave’. 4 years later, it appeared on Blonde and was noticeably stripped of the soulful guitar and thumping drums. An artistic choice that allowed the track to be much more minimalistic and cinematic. Frank spent much of his time in Germany visiting Berghain and creating with composer Wolfgang Tillmans, the photograher of the album cover. As previously mentioned, he also debuted the song in Germany and the name Siegfried means “Victory” in German. Siegfried is also considered as one of the heroes in the German poem titled “The Song of the Nibelungs”. It also may be a homage to the Soul Calibur series as its main character is named Siegfried. In his debut, Siegfried appeared as a young German man with short blond hair.

In December 2017, Rockstar Games updated “Grand Theft Auto Online” with Frank’s Beats1 radio show. In the Los Santos universe, Frank’s show is titled “blonded Los Santos 97.8 FM” and features tracks from several artists including Burial, Aphex Twin and Jay-Z.



