Putting Ocean in a box - even one as elastic as 'R&B' - does a disservice to his breadth. Channel Orange just happens to be inimitable. When Zayn Malik broke from One Direction to pursue solo stardom, he picked Ocean’s producer James 'Malay' Ho as his chief collaborator Mind of Mine ended up sounding like Miguel and The Weeknd anyway. Both men are often imitated and rarely surpassed spend an hour listening to Beats 1 or the Billboard charts, and you’ll hear their tendrils snaking through pop and R&B. He’s since become one of the biggest male pop stars on the planet. Abel Tesfaye released Trilogy, a compilation of his early mixtapes as The Weeknd, a few months later. Miguel released Kaleidoscope Dream two months after Channel Orange it made him a bona fide rock star, one working the middle ground between Marvin Gaye and Tame Impala with ease. Channel Orange has cast a remarkably small shadow over the sound of popular music since its release, especially when you compare it to the other albums that defined R&B in 2012. If you go into Channel Orange for the first time in 2016 looking for a Rosetta Stone of contemporary R&B, you’ll be disappointed. What about his work encourages boundless ridicule and quasi-religious hysteria? I listened to Channel Orange for a reminder. Four-year gaps between albums are hardly abnormal for musicians of any genre, even those whose popularity and prestige sits just a level or two below Ocean’s. Again, Channel Orange is just over four years old. But there’s never been a better time to revisit its contents, especially if - like me - you’re inclined toward skepticism when it comes to Ocean and Boys Don’t Cry hype. It’s over four years old at this point, and hundreds of worthy records have been released since.

If it’s been a second since you listened to it in full, I can’t blame you. I’ve spent the bulk of the week since listening to Channel Orange, which remains Ocean’s only studio album. Fans around the world held their breath as Friday, August 5th came and went without a release after months of similar false alarms, those same fans were looking at Ocean as the boy who cried 'new music.' It’s been almost a week since Frank Ocean opted out of releasing Boys Don’t Cry, a new LP with an impending arrival date that was reported by The New York Times and prefaced with hour after hour of meditative, Apple-sponsored woodworking.

Frank ocean albums