In five years, Frank Ocean has gone from releasing his proper debut album to proving the flimsy absurdity of the words “proper debut album.”
Just last year, his profound insight into music consumption finessed him from an unhappy record deal into prosperous free agency. But four years before Blondeintensified his cultural and critical dominance (as well as his bank account), Frank was just an up-and-comer. Channel Orange was released five years ago Monday (July 10) and before its arrival, a mixtape and handful of features to Ocean's name. It’s crazy to think there was once a time he was saddled with descriptors like “Odd Future crooner Frank Ocean.” In the years since, he’s welcomed us into one of music's most sensitive psyches and delivered on the promise of an artist whose early-career feature bested both Beyoncé’s and…um…Otis Redding’s on Kanye West and JAY-Z's collaborative mega-flex, Watch the Throne.
In the end, we decided “No Church in the Wild” isn't enough Frank's song to crack this early career canon, though certainly not out of failing to go hard enough. Parsing through less than a decade of material to come up with the top 10 Frank Ocean songs was no easy task. TUNES INDUSTRY BLOG SPOT