In his note, instead of embracing an identity, Ocean shared a set of memories and explored complex feelings, just as he does in his songs. There is another reason why Ocean can't be saddled with an easy label, and it points to an interesting aspect of his newly minted self-conception. "I hope that Frank Ocean doesn't become 'the gay singer,' for it would be criminally unfair for him to wear that label as so many of his peers are sleeping with and loving same gendered persons, while selling images of hyper-heterosexuality," she wrote. Especially black music, which has long been in desperate need of a voice like Ocean's to break the layers of homophobia."Īt, Jamilah Lemieux noted that while few urban artists openly embrace homosexuality, many are in "the closet with the glass door," living a life they don't reveal in their music. Kennedy called it "the glass ceiling moment for music. Los Angeles Times music writer Gerrick D. In the R&B world, this is nearly unprecedented. It is a kind of coming out: a revelation from a public figure that he's had serious relationships with both men and women. He said nice things," Ocean writes of the moment his friend rejected him), this brief window into a summer place matters on a few levels. Locating the intimate exchange in time and space, grounding it in lovely, painful detail ("He patted my back. Ocean unfolds his confession in a poetic but reserved manner, promising his former heart's companion one last thing: "Some things never are. I'm starting to think we're a lot alike" - and proceeds to tell of the now 24-year-old native Louisianan's first romance at 19, with a male friend who apparently reciprocated on some level, but refused Ocean's ultimate attempt to name their love.
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They start with a declaration of empathy - "Whoever you are, whatever you are. Ocean's act was this: after a journalist who attended a listening party for his new album, Channel Orange, noted that several of the songs were addressed to a male love object, the singer and songwriter turned to his own web page and published two long paragraphs which will likely be part of the liner notes for the July 17 release. (The website added the word "Famous" to its headline later, qualifying its exaggerations somewhat.)
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" Frank Ocean: My First Love Was a Man." "Frank Ocean Comes Clean About His Bisexuality And I Applaud Him For It!" "Frank Ocean Pulls an Anderson Cooper and Comes Out of the Closet." "Frank Ocean Comes Out and Becomes the First Gay Rapper in History." That last one is wrong on several levels: Ocean did not use the word "gay," nor is he a rapper, nor would he be the first gay rapper if either of those labels applied. Headlines varied on quickly assembled gossip reports, from the measured to the hyperbolic. At first, however, few observers agreed on what he'd done. Tuesday night the rising R&B star Frank Ocean did something important. The singer and songwriter Frank Ocean, whose first full-length studio album, Channel Orange, will be released on July 17.