E: We’re back with Blogging Ain’t Dead. I’m Eamon, welcome to year 0. Before last weekend, there was the B.F era (Before Frank), and we have finally arrived at A.F (Anno Frankini). Or C.F.E (Common Frank Era) if you want to be politically correct.

It happened, you guys. I was there.

R: Fuck introductions I have something to say.

E: Preach.

R: The internet age has changed every industry in the Western world. Cable is tripping over itself to tell you why it’s better than Netflix; newspaper companies have all but imploded, crumbling under the pressure to provide the news before Reddit conducts cyber-manhunts and Buzzfeed makes a listicle (even if mass murder was the reason your city made the news in the first place)… and then there’s music. Well, music is on the forefront of this still misunderstood platform — Napster, Limewire, Soulseek, torrents, Zippyshare, Pandora, YouTube, iTunes, Google Music, etc. In the same way that Netflix streaming eventually ran Blockbuster into the dirt, online streaming has made the physical release of a musical project obsolete.

Like when is the last time you walked into your f.y.e. and actually flipped through the store’s stock of whatever artists’ discography they happened to have on hand? I can tell you the last time I did that: 2006. When the Game dropped Doctor’s Advocate. I haven’t purchased one physical copy of music since that day.

E: You bought me Puberty 2 on vinyl, sweetie.

R: That wasn’t for my listening pleasure tho (and I told you not to call me that in public). So Jay Z doesn’t look so dumb now that we see what exclusive streaming rights are. I mean Tidal still blows, but that’s besides the point.

A collective groan could be heard for hours from rap fans on the East coast when The Life of Pablo less rolled and more drunkenly hobbled out into the sunlight after an all night bender on the day of its release. “Is this what it will be like for all artists releasing music from Tidal?” The answer was no. This was only the beginning for streaming releases as a whole.

A group chat I frequent — once called the Chop Shop, now known affectionately as “la Chopirstas Militaria” … can’t wait to see where these names will go — evaluated the rollout as something artists will copy. And while I wouldn’t say Blond(e?) by Frank Ocean follows in Kanye’s footsteps when it comes to its release, it does make me wonder:

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. MAYBE LABELS FORCING ARTISTS TO JUST FINISH THEIR SHIT AND PUT IT ON A DISK WASN’T THE WORST THING IN THE FUCKING WORLD.

So there are two schools of thought when it comes to (commercial) artists and delays to their projects:

These artists owe you nothing. The fact is that they are human beings, fallible and imperfect, working as hard as they can to create a beautiful piece of art that they can share with you and the world. These artists owe you everything. They are paid by us to make something we can enjoy. The audience is more important than the artist and they are in demand because of their product.

Guess which school I’m attending. I’ll give you a hint, it’s the one where you don’t delay your project just because the New York Times did their job (which I guess is general sleuthing for clickbait articles because a listicle on economics doesn’t exactly draw the unique visitors) and found out when you’d be releasing your fucking album because you prefer taking polaroids of fucking overdue library books.

Pictured: News Reporting On Roger’s Saltiness

E: Would you like some tequila and lime to go with all that salt? Damn.

Look, I hated every time this album was pushed back. It sucked. I wasted a lot of time staring at a video stream of an empty warehouse. Minutes of my life I’ll never get back, cool, whatever, thanks Frank.

Frank may have betrayed me, but Harambe never will. (Source: DailyDot)

But what wasn’t a waste of time was all the interaction and conversation I had with other people about this album. The r/hiphopheads and r/frankocean subreddits have been absolutely hilarious in finding new ways to keep hope alive in the face of what might have been the least likely album to be completed since Chinese Democracy. There were hundreds of people coming together to burn the midnight oil in the hopes that tonight might be the night the album drops. That was a cool thing, and I can’t think of another album release that’s even close to similar.

More than anything, I was just very, very stoked to have something to talk about in the summer of 2016 that wasn’t Donald Trump.

R: Yo let’s not forget the random dude who asked everybody to just message him their phone numbers so he could text them when the album came out.

E: The best part? He actually delivered. He put that post out something like two weeks before the album dropped and texted every one of those numbers. Insane.

R: Shouts out /u/bryan484. Forever the real MVP.

E: Like it or not, this album release was a moment, one that was big enough that everyone’s experience of waiting for it was unique and interesting. The more excited for it you were, the more people you could find who shared that feeling, and the better it became. I really can’t hate Frank for the choice he made.

Especially since this album is amazing.

R: I mean … I can. I have a friend who’s listening to one song a day as a sort of retaliation. She just gave me her review of “Ivy.”

I’m not the only salty one out there, Eamon.

E: Put aside the salt, Yung Sodium. Enough about the leadup. Let’s talk how this thing actually sounds.

R: I agree. This album is good. Worth all the fuckery that was its release? Time will tell.

E: Right. So. As much as I don’t think going through this thing track-by-track is the way to go, we can’t not start with “Nikes”. Great beat, simple 808s and angelic synths. Can’t go wrong. But Frank delivering his first notes on the album — some emotionally poignant ones at that — with that pitch-shifted effect is not quite something I understand.

R: Cooked decision, Eamon. Cooked decision.

E: Utterly cooked.

R: Like, as a person who’s seen the business end of a cook stick or two, let me tell you that only someone who has faced four blunts and shotgunned a thermos of shroom tea thinks saying:

“Rest in peace Trayvon / That nigga look just like me / Whoooooooooo fucking buzzing [????] whooooooo”

in high-pitched vocals recorded in a room-sized tin can is the right way to open an album.

Pictured: Cook stick, average sized.

E: Personally, I still think it holds up. It still gives me a bit of a jump when his unaltered voice comes in on the second verse. Especially when he’s rapping in double time and still hitting all the right notes.

R: Could’ve been my favorite track on the album, real talk. Like the instrumental is minimalistic greatness. And the lyrics, while not ground-breaking, speak enough to hedonistic decisions — questioning the lifestyle and life itself — that I can get on board. But it’s just too damn cooked.

E: Alright, but let’s talk about the lyrics. Because I think Frank was up against his biggest challenge here. When channel ORANGE came out, we were just reaching the peak of narcotic-heavy Xanax-and-lean rap. And although that album still holds up, a lot of the memorable lyrics were drug/money/cars references. That style of writing was not going to hold up in 2016. We’re swimming in that kind of shit right now. Fetty Wap had a #1 hit about cooking crack. Rapping about your chemical intake is played.

R: Well let’s not pretend there aren’t quite a few drug references floating around this project. My favorite song of the project starts with:

“Hand me a towel I’m dirty dancing / By myself, gone off tabs / Of that acid”

E: No, of course. And I’m not trying to say “no one should ever rap about drugs again.” We started this blog with a Pusha T review, after all. But still, Frank knew he had to do some shifting if he wanted to make something innovative. And in my mind, he nailed that. The lyrics on this thing are smart without being self-congratulatory, oscillating between playful and dead serious. There’s too many moments to name individually, but the chorus to “Solo”, pretty much all of “Self-Control,” the cheeky lil’ Shakespeare reference on the first track… he did his homework. The album feels more mature lyrically.

R: It is definitely more mature. I want to say here that I don’t want to compare Blond(e?) to channel ORANGE too much simply because they are completely different works. However. “Super Rich Kids” from that album stuck to me when I first heard it if for no other reason than the fact that I was surrounded by super rich kids with nothing but fake friends for a bit when I began college. I wasn’t super rich, depression hadn’t hit me full swing, yet there I was surrounded by the glamour that is masturbatory flagilation. I became a part of that — a sybaritist, if you will (LOOK AT ME NOW MASON. LOOK AT ALL THE WORDS I KNOW).

Now, that part of life is over. I’m not standing on the roof of a friend’s apartment building in Brooklyn, cigarette lit, wondering if the fall would kill me. I don’t have the time for those flights of fancy anymore. I can either choose remedy or remorse. Blond (fuck it that’s what I’m calling it) sees a more mature Christopher Francis Breaux Ocean as well, focusing more on inward reflection than outward acceptance both in theme and aesthetic when it comes to this project.

E: And that serves him well. Inward-facing albums are a necessary step after a while. But if we’ve made how we feel about the lyrics clear, let’s talk sonics real quick.

I figured that since this album was going to inevitably be compared to channel ORANGE anyway, I ought to go back and listen to it all the way through before Blonde dropped. I’m glad I did.

R: Fair enough. It didn’t occur to me to do that simply because I have that album memorized down to the TV click and the faint sound of an oldschool PlayStation being started up.

E: I mean, same. But my memories of chanel ORANGE (for reference) are also tied to little things, like the lifeguarding job I was working in the summer of 2012, or how everyone and their mother played that album whenever they got someone to come back with them to their freshman dorm.

channel Orange was the musical equivalent of a tie on the doorknob from about August 2012 to February 2013.

But re-listening to it gave me some conflicting feelings. On the one hand, the albums don’t sound too drastically different. There’s still plenty of funky guitar riffs, simple drum programming, and dear-god-i’m-soaking-wet crooning from Franky. On the other hand, there isn’t a moment on Blonde that gives me chills like I get when the synth comes in on “Pyramids”. The drums on “Pretty Sweet” come close, but not quite.

R: channel ORANGE was much more lush. And I mean that in almost every way possible. The string sections were recorded and mixed perfectly; the drums were eq’d like ?uestlove was in the studio guiding Malay and Ocean’s hands every step of the way. The only moment that sounds comparable to me is the “Godspeed” organ when compared to “Forrest Gump.” I love that affirmation of letting go and self love present in both songs. And Frank loves “Godspeed” as well (obvi):

(take note he spells it “favourite”)

E: Well as far as big, theatrical moments go, channel ORANGE might be better album. There’s higher highs and lower lows. But where cO is some amazing singles that all happen to be on the same album, there’s a concept behind Blonde. I don’t see myself picking an individual track out and throwing it on my fucking “Driving in the Summer” playlist or whatever. But this album is going to be played front-to-back a LOT in my life for the foreseeable future.

R: And I’ll be skipping “Nikes” almost every single one of those times. On a slightly different note, I’d like to point out that the unrepentant Black mom makes another appearance on the album in the form of the one and a half minute fourth track “Be Yourself.” Which leads into “Solo.” Which. Just listen to this track. Nothing else to say.

E: If you listen to that song and don’t feel something, I’ve got nothing to say to you. You’re reading the wrong blog. Talk to your doctor.

R: “Solo (Reprise)” has an Andre 3-stacks verse btw. One of my friends from college described it as “underwhelming.” I’m now reconsidering my relationship with said “friend.” Because that verse is fuego. Here’s a snippet:

“Solo my cup is a rojo, my cholo, my friend / So low that I can admit / When I hear that another kid is shot by the popo it ain’t an event / No more”

Like fffffuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

E: And it’s over a beat that sounds like a fucking GameBoy Color being fed to a weed whacker. Holy shit. Andre 3k can do anything. Except make another OutKast album of course. But I’ll take this happily.

Pictured: Frank in the Studio (From HomestarRunner (Real OG shit))

R: But that GameBoy beat only happens for eleven seconds. And it is the most lit eleven seconds of your life.

E: Well, except for “Pretty Sweet.” The most gripping moment on this album comes when Frank just goes “fuck it” and starts wordlessly chanting over an absolutely fire breakbeat. That’s not something you can just toss on your album, you have to earn that. And he does, over 15 tracks of buildup.

R: The beginning of this track is probably the single most jarring moment of Ocean’s whole career. He is the sole writer and producer on this track. Frank at his most unhinged. Best summed up by this RapGenius (now just Genius) comment:

E: I’m with him there. I can’t say much about this song because there’s so little to say about it, and for that I am grateful.

Look, almost all of this seems like an exercise in futility. After four years of hype, there’s no chance of me developing an objective opinion on this album. I might keep it near me for the rest of my life, I might never listen to it again in two years. I’m not sure I can tell which is the case right now. But what I do know is that everything about the release (including the year of waiting, the big dumb delays, and incessant Harambe memes) were a big part of my summer. I’ll remember that. Not sure you can ask for more.

R: I will definitely listen to “Solo” and “Godspeed.” But I feel you. The Yung Lean haircut contribution (shouts out Connor Myers for that connection) to the pure hate for Frank due to his rollout of the project, to the scansion of verse I haven’t done since Shakespeare class in high school (got a solid C+), this is a memory.

E: You’re an idiot. But you’re an idiot I waited for this album for a year with.

R: So. I guess we gotta score this thing.

5/5 (or an “Art” out of “Fuk u”)

E: #Frankwatch is dead, Viva #Frankwatch. We’re out.