The wait for a new album from Frank Ocean is finally over. Or is it?
Thursday night, Ocean released Endless, a “visual album” of sorts, in the form of a 45-minute video that dropped exclusively on Apple Music. The anticipation for new music from Frank Ocean has been eating the internet up. A lot of people were annoyed by the seemingly endless clues to release dates that never ended up fruitful, but still checked in as he dropped mysterious live streams.
Endless uses the same footage we saw streaming on his website, boysdontcry.co in the beginning of August. Francisco Soriano, who directed the “Lost” video, is credited as the director of photography for this project, which depicts Ocean in a warehouse building a staircase.
If you’re a Frank Ocean fan who has been anxiously anticipating his follow-up, there’s a lot to process here.
Vocal features include Jazmine Sullivan (who has credits on four songs) and Sampha, and even more notable artists contributed in other ways. For Ocean’s cover of Aaliyah’s “At Your Best (You Are Love)” — an Isley Brother’s cover — James Blake, who has collaborated with Ocean in the past, is on synthesizers, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and the London Contemporary Orchestra contribute the strings, and Om’mas Keith (who was on and won a Grammy for Channel Orange) is on piano. The collaborators Ocean chose are a natural fit. There’s plenty of talent and accolades among them without being too flashy.
But if this visual release isn’t exactly what you were looking forward to, there’s still hope.
An Apple Music rep told Pitchfork to “keep an eye out this weekend for more from Frank.” Rolling Stone claims to have confirmed that Endless is indeed different from his new album, previously titled Boys Don’t Cry. And Ocean himself did say, “I got two versions.”
So the waiting game for Channel Orange‘s follow-up doesn’t appear to be over.
But we’ve got 12 tracks on a 45-minute visual to hold us over until the next drop.
