Frank Ocean Warned Us: He’s Just a Guy, Not a God
IF YOU’VE BEEN ON ANY PART OF THE INTERNET IN RECENT WEEKS — you’ll know that Frank Ocean has once again been making headlines. First, for a chaotic and abruptly-ending set at weekend one of Coachella, and then for pulling out of weekend two entirely a few days later. For many, this came as a surprise, but as longtime Ocean fans will tell you, this kind of behavior is pretty on par.
Many fans were excited to see Ocean perform in large part due to his 2017 festival run, which included the now-famous Spike Jonze-directed Lovebox set and the legendary Panorama Festival set. The legacy of these shows can be seen across the cultural landscape — they’re frequent topics of discussion in r/FrankOcean, as well as on moodboard Instagram pages such as hidden.ny (more on this later). What tends to get lost in the shadow of the 2017 Blonded Tour is the fact that Ocean dropped out of three of the festivals he was slated for at the last minute. The shows he did follow through with were not met with unanimous praise, either, with one attendee dubbing Ocean “a proper vibe killer.” Ocean’s statements during his performance (“I’m just trying to figure this out”) are not dissimilar from those he made during his set at Coachella: “This is fucking chaotic, but so much fun.”
Of course, it’s been six years since the Blonded Tour, and a lot of things have happened since then — it’s no surprise that people don’t remember the Primavera Sound cancellation or the mixed reception of the Lovebox set. In 2020, Ocean reappeared after three years of near-silence, releasing a series of singles on streaming services. Along with these tracks, Ocean also announced a series of nightclub-inspired parties in New York City, dubbed PrEP+ — after pre-exposure prophylaxis — where he would invite DJs and friends to perform and remix his songs. The parties themselves caught some slack for the project’s misdirected mission statement and execution, pointing out how the series of parties came across as revisionist, performative, and hollow It was a moment of reckoning for a lot of Ocean’s fans, particularly those who are queer and POC, who felt that the event was trying to cater to the whiter and straighter portion of Ocean’s fanbase.
PrEP+ was also criticized for its exclusivity. There was no clear and direct way to purchase or obtain tickets, meaning that if you were just a regular old joe, you probably weren’t going to get in. This points to a larger trend in Ocean’s career, especially post-Blond. As mentioned earlier, images of Ocean are almost a guarantee when perusing Instagram pages such as aplasticplant or hidden.ny, aggregator accounts that collect images of trendy and rare sneaker collabs and archive clothing — in other words, status symbols.
Ocean is no stranger to surprise drops and limited runs. When Blonde was released in 2016, Ocean also released an exclusive 360-page magazine in select pop-up stores around the world, which he would then go on to release on his website on Black Friday of the same year, and once more in 2019. During the Black Friday merch drop, Ocean released a limited physical run of Blond on vinyl, which would not see a repress until Dec. 2022. For most of these, there was little to no warning. If you were able to get your hands on any of these products, it meant you were in the know — you were ahead of everybody else.
It begins to make sense, then, why Ocean’s rise to near-mythological status coincides directly with the rise of hype culture. To enjoy pages such as aplasticplant and hidden.ny, you have to engage with a certain kind of cultural code. Often, no captions or descriptions of the shoes, archive pieces, or images are posted. You won’t find out where you can purchase these objects or where that Pharrell picture was sourced from.
But that’s not the point — if you have to ask about it, you’re already behind. Ocean’s inclusion on these pages speaks volumes about his place in today’s popular culture. Yes, he is an incredibly gifted musician who’s created incredibly influential work, but, in some ways, his elusive nature and enigmatic behavior have led to him becoming a symbol of today’s culture.
In many ways, this is what lies at the core of the tension between Ocean and the public. We’ve made a symbol out of a man, a collectively-constructed one that represents all that we want him to be: artistic, genius, and most importantly, our own little secret.
There’s a possessiveness to the symbol that Ocean might be trying to wrestle himself away from. Many fans were upset with Ocean for having performed reworked versions of his songs during Coachella's first weekend, lamenting about not getting to hear their favorites the way they wanted them performed. Reworking songs seems to be Ocean’s resistance to expectations, but also a reclamation of his art and — most importantly — a resistance to what popular culture has turned him into.
There’s no denying that what happened at Coachella was due to Ocean’s own lack of professionalism and preparedness, but had everything gone perfectly according to plan, would Ocean have lived up to everything he’s come to represent?
Maybe it’s time we reexamine the ways in which we engage with Ocean and his work. Maybe it’s time to take him off the pedestal and remind ourselves of what Frank Ocean himself told us on Blonde's closing track Futura Free: he's just a guy, not a god.
Photo by Collier Schorr, courtesy of Gay Letter
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