Blonde

<b>100 Best Albums</b> In the four years between Frank Ocean’s debut album <i>channel ORANGE</i> and his second, <i>Blonde</i>, he had revealed some of his private life—he published a post on social media about having been in love with a man—but still remained as mysterious and skeptical towards fame as ever, teasing new music sporadically and then disappearing like a wisp on the wind. Behind great innovation, however, is a massive amount of work, and so when <i>Blonde</i> was released one day after a 24-hour streaming performance art piece (<i>Endless</i>) and alongside a limited-edition magazine entitled <i>Boys Don’t Cry</i>, his slipperiness felt more like part of a carefully considered mystique. Even the apparent indecision over the album title’s official spelling can be seen in hindsight as being characteristically mischievous.

<i>Endless</i> featured the mundane beauty of Ocean woodworking in a studio, soundtracked by abstract and meandering ambient music. <i>Blonde</i> built on those ideas and imbued them with more form, taking a left-field, often minimalist approach to his breezy harmonies and ever-present narrative lyricism. His confidence was crucial to the risk of creating a big multimedia project for a sophomore album, but it also extended to his songwriting—his voice surer of itself (“Solo”), his willingness to excavate his weird impulses more prominent (“Good Guy” and “Pretty Sweet,” among others).

Though <i>Blonde</i> packs 17 tracks into one quick hour, it’s a sprawling palette of ideas, a testament to the intelligence of flying one’s own artistic freak flag and trusting that audiences will meet you where you’re at. They did. And Ocean established himself as a generational artist uniquely suited to the complexities and convulsive changes of the second decade of the 21st century.