In the contemporary social media driven music industry, artists must share and engage to maintain their fan base. Yet Prince was famous long before the digital era dawned.
Rarely giving interviews, allowing the music to be its own voice and a dedication to maintaining his privacy, he constructed a shimmering indeterminacy that lasted his entire career. Frank the enigmaĪnother star who built his career on curated mystery was Prince, who Ocean has attested to being a fan of. Apple employees, whose logo appeared in the video, were reportedly bombarded by eager fans demanding more information. The footage deconstructed in minute detail – down to the type of saw Ocean held and the type of work for which it is commonly used.
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Images of the singer have been discovered in the code of the website. Since the video footage was released, fans have dedicated an intense amount of energy to deconstructing its meaning. This behaviour attracts both admiration and frustration, often in equal measure. Ocean, who has no official Twitter or Instagram account, has developed a sense of artistic integrity in an era where the concept is increasingly elusive. His emphasis on a slowed down approach to the construction of the work and the labour involved presents Ocean as an artist who values the quality of the work – as a personal statement – over prolific output. This is, of course, an ideal position to be in when the long-awaited album finally arrives. There are few artists that can find themselves in the spotlight, creating this kind of attention, by doing so little. On August 4, Ocean was a top trending search on Google, at more than half a million searches. Page views on Wikipedia are up more than 300%. According to Forbes, Ocean saw a near doubling of video views on both YouTube and Vevo – all without actually releasing any new music. The cryptic release strategy has of course created a spike in traffic to his website and his presence across almost all social media platforms has increased. Despite driving many crazy, the strategy he is adopting is a way of maintaining integrity and constructing an enigma in a culture that moves at a frenetic pace. We see “buzz” being generated around artists through social media so often that it loses its power. There are few mainstream artists that can create such a feverish buzz on a mass scale. Ocean is by no means the first to attempt to curate a sense of mystery, but in an age of oversharing, constructing anticipation on this level is difficult to achieve. But the enigma that is Frank Ocean was cemented. It began to be believed that Ocean’s album would be released on Friday August 5. Throughout the footage, instrumental music played and the camera cut to alternate angles. Intermittently, the person stopped work to check their phone. Later, the individual drilled holes and sliced metal poles.
In fact, he is attractively lost.After a number of hours, a person who appeared to be Ocean became visible and proceeded to saw wooden boards into pieces. Seigfried captures a feeling of cosmic detachment: “I can’t relate to my peers/ I’d rather live outside/ I’d rather chip my pride than lose my mind out here.” Blonde is a collection of quiet moments from the man who’s worked hard to make himself the most talked about thing on the internet. Solo is the sweet, homoerotically charged account of the space left behind by a toking buddy who is gone (“Now your baby momma ain’t so vicious, all she wants is her picket fence”).
You find yourself caring anew about the “I” of these songs, who is reflected in snatches of impressionistic poetry, in sunlight, summer smoke and boxer shorts. There is still the powerful sense of a veiled introvert, and of the unlikely intimacy he achieves within this pose. Unofficial import on yellow vinyl - Ocean has managed to preserve the musical personality that marked him out as special on 2012’s immersive, psychedelic R&B game-changer, Channel Orange.
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