Well, now it it appears pretty damn obvious, 2012 will be the year of Frank Ocean. He came, he saw, he played with Odd Future and Kanye, he jumped out of the closet, he released his first album, he smiled a lot at Terminal 5 (I saw him there twice and once at Hammerstein, though he was only the headliner once) and the world fell to its knees in awe.
Me? I am much less certain, listening to Channel Orange for the first time in a couple of months, it doesn’t suck quite as bad as I said it did, but it isn’t as great as the rest of the world claims it is either. I’ll give him ”Thinkin Bout You”, “Super rich Kids”, maybe “Novocane” and “Forrest Gump” but after that I start searching. Still, not bad, not bad.
But not the album of the year as Spin listed it , not Uncut’s token r&b character, not Brooklyn Vegans album of the year (it hasn’t been posted as we speak, but that would certainly be my assumption.). It is too dusky, the melodies aren’t strong enough. What can we make of “Sweet Life” or “Pyramid”, they seem to be in the business of not being where they should be, they are consistently not what I want to hear. “Why see the world when you have the beach?” sounds like as great an all summer long anthem as you get, but it really isn’t. It is like he learnt from Maxwell while D’Angelo had all the answers.
If I can concede that part of this is my own prejudice, the prejudice is over melody or beat and I am not thrilled by either. I will take James Brown on The One and no melody or I will take Smokey Robinson and melody to die for, but I don’t get either with Frank Ocean (or the Weeknd or Miguel…). Instead I get an excellent falsetto and a good vocal range and an atmospheric mood music so constantly downcast it is like pall upon the songs.
I’ve listened to Channel Orange a lot more times than I really want to and I do admire it, I admire that it moves off from its Mix Tape roots without being a sell out. It’s a good album. But it is overrated for many a reason that speaks to rock journalism soft spots. Frank Ocean is the Barack Obama of r&b, everybody votes for him but they are not sure why. It just seems like the right thing to do..