The Missing Frank Ocean Album
Frank Ocean at a listening event in Los Angeles on December 2, 2011. Photo Taken by Dave Smith.
Five years, 10 months and 11 days. Those dwelling numbers show the last time that Frank Ocean dropped an album and fans are clutching at the straws for another release. The beloved artist has impressively managed to keep his relevance throughout half a decade without releasing a single body of work. His critically acclaimed, ‘Blonde,’ had definitely managed to uphold that. The independent album is now certified platinum and was named ‘the best album of the 2010s’ by popular music publication, Pitchfork. Fans are now dying to hear what Frank has next in store for us. But throughout the painful wait, was there a glimpse of a scrapped album run?
On October 19th, 2019, we finally got some fresh Frank Ocean music. The single ‘DHL’ gave us a melodic and chill vibe. Our ears were given a hint to the possible sound of the anticipated album. However, the most interesting part of the song wasn’t the music, it was the cover.
The smack middle of the cover saw a shirtless Frank Ocean with a bag over his head. However, in the bottom right corner, we can see a line of silhouettes. The fourth picture is strongly highlighted which has the exact resemblance to the current DHL cover. As a result, there is strong evidence that this could be a tracklist for a future album. The other silhouettes aren’t highlighted so with our theory, DHL would be the fourth track from this new record.
The talks of this hypothesis got even stronger with Frank releasing another single, only two weeks later, named ‘In My Room.’ The song's cover had the exact same layout as DHL with multiple silhouettes again on the bottom right.
Despite the fact that the order of the pictures changed, and new ones were added, the concept remained clear. So, what went wrong? Fans started to catch onto the hype of the possibility of a new long-awaited album from the Californian songwriter.
We can detail several possibilities on why this album is missing. Number one could be the messy events of 2020, Especially with COVID-19. The music world came to a halt when the pandemic hit, and Ocean could’ve slid the album away for another time. Perhaps when a worldwide tour is possible and physical copies become available in local stores.
Frank was scheduled to headline Coachella in 2020. The line-up was announced before the first case. If the pandemic didn't break out, who knows if we would have the album in our hands.
The main reason why this album wasn’t released was likely due to the devastating loss of Frank’s 18-year-old brother, Ryan Breaux. In such a tragedy in Frank's life, no person would be fit to dwell in the limelight with a new album release.
The incident gives us the bigger picture in the world of music. These artists don’t owe anything to us. If Frank decides to take a full-time hiatus from the music industry, then so be it. It's refreshing to see artists taking as much time as they need to drop their body of work to the best of their ability. The music industry (especially labels) should stop laying pressure on artists to dump their music onto us. It's now just a matter of hoping that Frank himself is doing well and we wish the outstanding artist all the best.