Frank Ocean, 'Boys Don't Cry'

wtf is up with the frank apologism

Though festivalgoers are often irritated (a woman behind me angrily yelled about the £125 she spent on festival tickets solely to see Ocean), it’s also indulged as a quirk of character, part and parcel of his talent. Ocean is considered a genius who strings along his audience with fake release dates, unreliable performance schedules and an internet presence consisting of vague tumblr posts and media blackouts.

seriously what is the deal with this dude? not fulfilling vinyl orders, his verified facebook was hacked but "it's not actually official"? and then the disastrous live shows...

part of his numinous appeal iirc

feel like he would be the worst date

it's a quirk of character, part and parcel of his talent.

i saw his live show and it was very far from disastrous

his talent affords him license to be an enigma, not really that crazy of a story

yeah, I shouldn't have said disastrous, I guess inconsistent. which is fine I suppose. but taking peoples' money and not delivering product is fucked up, no excuses for that

I saw his first live show in three years and found it disastrous, walked out after 30 minutes

I know people who were in the front and who found it great though

When an artist has the level of attention and talent that he has, something strange and miraculous happens, whereby the entire world starts to bend to the artist's will. Certain musicians will, at this moment, industrialize their process out of necessity, which has the long-term effect of weakening their product. Other musicians will just get fat and lazy on the power they have, and feel genuine amazement when their latest turd doesn't float anyone's boat.

In Frank's case, like Kanye before him, and Prince, probably, he takes this immense agency and uses it to form an abusive relationship with his staff and audience-- he pushes his administrative team and his production team to work all night and make great sacrifice, he makes unreasonable demands on everyone and everything, and the result is moments of incandescence: a travelling silk-screen station for his merch-- never mind that the line is four hours long. A second album to go with the long anticipated other album-- never mind that it's only available in lousy audio on video-- oh, now it's on vinyl! never mind that it's 6 minutes of music per side.

Artist-audience relationships are inherently abusive-- nobody deserves this kind of attention, really, do they?

Anyway my point is that yeah the feeling of having to "work for it"-- stand in line, get up front, wait because the artist is late-- it only creates more devotion in the audience

Me I think he's a genius I'm 100% enthralled and buying into the myth

Ha. I was going to respond, "His nightmarish treatment of staff won't matter in forty years if he's a genius. Which he isn't."

the A/V aspects of his show were wonky in the first dates and i guess he cancelled all those shows before that but by the time i saw him it was by far the coolest and most visually interesting festival set i've ever seen. the music itself isn't made for festivals and i was close to the stage so that mattered too but if festivals wanted to pay him to put on that kinda show that's fine by me.

if we're gonna cite anything as evidence of him being a schmuck i'd prob go w/ him recently suing om'mas keith over the publishing on blonde. but that he's not easy to work with ain't really my problem.

Alfo your anti-Frank propaganda is peak Alfo gaslighting, repeating “he’s no genius” over and over again will not and does not do anything but destabilize your credibility

i do not get his music, but he's clearly a genius of some kind if he's managed to achieve the blanket adulation of every young music enthusiast on the internet

i mean he's either a genius or a meme. or both

Alfo your anti-Frank propaganda is peak Alfo gaslighting, repeating “he’s no genius” over and over again will not and does not do anything but destabilize your credibility

― nevertheless, he stopped (flamboyant goon tie included),

Do I get to look like Charles Boyer if my credibility keeps destabilizing?

Oh come now you’re more handsome than that jerk

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/14/89/38/148938f74280e777ef12889fd69ba334.jpg

Artist-audience relationships are inherently abusive-- nobody deserves this kind of attention, really, do they?

great post, fgti

Ha. I was going to respond, "His nightmarish treatment of staff won't matter in forty years if he's a genius. Which he isn't."

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, March 21, 2018 10:14 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree w/ alf.

I wonder how brilliant one musician has to be before they get the big G word applied to them round here, then

I can’t think of a more talented creator-of-work (where the work includes music, myth-building, public person, and effect)— and certainly he’s my favourite creator of effortlessly queer music

Like for real, haters, step back a second. Who else is occupying the public eye and creating such strong work that is necessarily queer? I can think of nobody. For the first time in my life am I inspired by a queer musician, one who isn’t inverting straightness, or existing within the rubric of camp, or is sex-focused— he just is and that is amazing to me

Who else is occupying the public eye and creating such strong work that is necessarily queer?

"public eye" aspect of this question narrows the field considerably

but lmao being referred to as a hater in this conversation is making me not really want to engage anyway

For the first time in my life am I inspired by a queer musician, one who isn’t inverting straightness, or existing within the rubric of camp, or is sex-focused

i can however think of several musicians that fit into this particular rubric, they're just not popular

i really hope he manages to record an album that lives up to his genius reputation now. channel orange was great and there were certainly moments of genius on blonde but a lot of it felt like reaching for genius and not quite getting there to me

also literally the last thing i read about this dude was about the molecular spread of his influence and his general gnomic genius, i'm sure he can survive being called "not a genius" by one critic on a message board (i don't particularly care if he's a genius or not, or that saying someone's a genius necessarily means anything to me, his music is often too shapeless to be compelling to me and i'm aware that shapelessness is part of the attraction for the people who recognize him as such, there's an absence, a kind of inner resistance, that's obviously fun to think about and try to figure out)

isn't the whole romantic "genius" concept played? anyway, if the idea of musical genius has anything to do with complexity I always found Frank Ocean's shtick pretty simple, his success more reliant on excellent marketing than anything else

maybe it's more of a media star type genius, but I just don't care for his press at all

he has some good tunes, no doubt, but so does Drake and nobody's calling him a genius

oh yeah and I don't hate Frank Ocean at all (although I find his apparent disregard of his audience unappealing) I just find the critical acclaim surprising, always sounded like nice little songs to me, nothing special

Dissenting opinions make ILM interesting. It's really boring when everyone agrees. Also good to see Brad around

there's a smashing pumpkins poll on, no way that alone wouldn't lure me back, but also thank u ross <3

Who else is occupying the public eye and creating such strong work that is necessarily queer?

"public eye" aspect of this question narrows the field considerably

It's the "public eye" part of it tho that makes it so interesting and daring, I guess, that his queer black boy joy-and-pain would resonate so strongly across the board. I can't think of any other queer artist who maintains such a broad fanbase of people who can empathize with the sentiments expressed in his songs on a 1:1 level, (something that I've always felt frustrated with, in seeing the dynamic between the work of, say, John Grant or Anohni and their straight audiences)

I used "hater" in jest btw

My raised-eyebrow here isn't really about Frank Ocean's birthright to the term "genius" but rather about the the "too many notes" kind of dismissiveness that describing him as "not a genius" affects. It's dismissive. "Not a genius"? fine. At least he's very very very good, then? Or "shows promise"? idk. I had the same issue last month when "Moonlight" was being described as "on the nose". What is it about black queer excellence that elicits this dismissiveness

https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/62044377/there-are-how-shall-one-say-too-many-notes.jpg

spicy thread bump. i want to reiterate that i like his music a lot, not a huge active fan, but i bumped this thread because the whole taking peoples' money and not delivering product is just inexcusable imo, and seeing fans make excuses for him sorta pissed me off - fgti is so otm itt, especially w/r/t relationship with fanbase & staff bordering on abusive. and describing pop up shops as "incandescent" is perfect

I used "hater" in jest btw

lol i figured but i still bristled, sorry about that

What is it about black queer excellence that elicits this dismissiveness

oh i see the plan of attack here

after being kinda dismissive itt, it turns out i kinda like "blonde" now though i still found myself disengage for stretches of it.

i wish there were more Songs

I got in a sidewalk discussion a couple weeks ago about Channel Orange vs. Blond, they were saying something similar, that they wish there were more songs, but I argued that Blonde was itself attempting something loftier, a kind of intangibility, songs that existed in half-forms and transitions so as to create a dream-like state, it was obscurantism as a thesis, masterfully pulled off with the Endless maguffin and the Boys Don't Cry false title (and resultant book) and even in the Blond(e) ambiguity (even his admin and collaborators receive a smirk when they ask him if it's a masculine or feminine spelling), the experience is wonderfully post-modern while retaining that accessibility. I don't want an album that is "Ivy" and "Pink & White" and a dozen other songs like it, I wanted this

i can appreciate that. and there are other artists for which that works for me (flying lotus comes to mind rn.)

i was somewhat dismissive of blonde when it came out, but it does seem to be specifically created for the type of late summer ennui that i'm experiencing right now

still think Nikes is not a good song tho

Yah I gotta agree, Nikes is weak

aw i like that one!!

I got in a sidewalk discussion a couple weeks ago about Channel Orange vs. Blond, they were saying something similar, that they wish there were more songs, but I argued that Blonde was itself attempting something loftier, a kind of intangibility, songs that existed in half-forms and transitions so as to create a dream-like state, it was obscurantism as a thesis, masterfully pulled off with the Endless maguffin and the Boys Don't Cry false title (and resultant book) and even in the Blond(e) ambiguity (even his admin and collaborators receive a smirk when they ask him if it's a masculine or feminine spelling), the experience is wonderfully post-modern while retaining that accessibility. I don't want an album that is "Ivy" and "Pink & White" and a dozen other songs like it, I wanted this

― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, August 25, 2018 12:21 PM (yesterday) Bookmark

i'm not sure i quite buy blonde as dreamlike and half formed exactly (tho i would apply that to the new blood orange, and they are def cut from the same cloth in some regards), but one thing i do love about blonde that is prob picking up on the same thread is how isolated it feels. there's not much to many of the songs, as if he created them on his own off somewhere in the ether. this is prob true in some sense literally but to me the songs also don't have the feel of being demos or unfinished, so i guess that's where we would break. but there's some quality in the album that dovetails w/ his post-fame public persona as this quicksilver presence that i find really authentic & alluring

i was somewhat dismissive of blonde when it came out, but it does seem to be specifically created for the type of late summer ennui that i'm experiencing right now

― guardians of the gums: i am tooth (voodoo chili), Saturday, August 25, 2018 11:17 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

rt

and tbh i came all the way around to really loving it

welcome

i still rate this below channel orange but "solo" "self control" and "nights" alone make it a classic

it's still a really frustrating listen, there's a lot of brilliant tracks (i especially love "self control" and "white ferrari") but also plenty that feel clunky and half-formed ("ivy", "nights" has some cool parts but doesn't hold together that well, "pretty sweet", "seigfried", "futura free") and i hate the sequencing and the interludes so it doesn't work as an album at all for me.

Fans like him for his maladroit songwriting and well-intentioned gestures. I've made my peace with it.