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Frank Ocean - channel ORANGE

As of about a week ago, with this eloquent note, Frank Ocean became the first major urban artist to come out of the closet. Luther Vandross would be proud. This bit of news, quite justifiably, got the guy a ton of media coverage.

To capitalize, his label has just rush released his major label debut, channel ORANGE, on iTunes.  Unfortunately, the album sucks. His earlier mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra, was full of interesting songs that were well written and soulfully sung. Here, the music is still intriguing and soulful, but there's little quality or focus. At least 2/3 of the album sounds like an extended interlude, and the other 1/3 is not particularly memorable either. I like Thinking of You, Lost, and Forrest Gump, but three good songs out of 17 is not particularly good.

tl;dr: The first major openly gay urban artist releases his debut to great media fanfare. Too bad it sucks. Go and listen to his old mixtape instead, that shit was off the chain.

Comments

  1. DavidJuly 10, 2012 at 11:47 PM

    "Lost" was the only song that caught my attention, having already heard "Thinking About You."

    ReplyDelete

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