More importantly, it sets the tone lyrically for the rest of the album. After several tracks that don’t really go anywhere or deliver a hook, “Sweet Life” gets to the point, a powerful bassline combined with distant keyboards and Ocean’s voice layered everywhere. Clocking in 17 tracks, the album feels occasionally overstuffed, but there’s more than one entry here that’s sure to be a radio hit (in a cleaned up version, of course). On the other hand, the songs on channel ORANGE are far more radio friendly than the sometimes squirm-inducing lyrics of the former and decidedly more professionally produced than the latter, which speaks well for his commercial prospects.Īnd make no mistake about that part, channel ORANGE is designed to make Ocean a star. If anything, the album sometimes accidentally reveals Ocean’s limits as a singer compared to the two, or to most soulful vocalists. While Ocean’s music belongs in the same world of nostalgia, drug abuse, listlessness and doomed romance as those two, he doesn’t quite have the grueling intensity of Abel Tesfaye or the experimentalism of Tom Krell, respectively. channel ORANGE evokes two other recent musical acts that benefited from the word of mouth blogosphere, the Weeknd and How to Dress Well. Kelly knock-off, either Ocean approaches his medium with a stronger grasp of self-consciousness than simply singing about sex over throbbing rhythms. It’s an album full of smooth synthesizers, keyboards, understated beats and multi-tracked vocals. While Ocean has resisted being boxed in as a strictly R&B singer, channel ORANGE is based in the formula of slinky, sensual R&B. After a widely seen performance on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” (the same program that broke Odd Future to the public at large) and a blog post, Ocean has released his official debut, channel Orange, to an unprecedented level of cultural discussion. And why not? In a group full of live action cartoons and clumsy provocateurs, his cool, quiet passion set him apart from his peers, as did his songwriting chops after all, you don’t get to write tunes for Justin Bieber without some serious talent. hip-hop collective, he’s gained widespread visibility through his association with them. Though Frank Ocean’s musical career predated his involvement with the L.A.

The Odd Future hype machine keeps rolling forward, and it’s up to you to believe it.

Frank ocean channel orange review