Frank ocean nostalgia ultra12/17/2023 ![]() ![]() A resourceful songwriter, Ocean already has Beyonce on his phone: the best ballad on 4 is Ocean’s “I Miss You.” Should The-Dream and Ne-Yo ever falter, a career as songwriter for divas beckons (and he’s better at sin-and-salvation than Terius Nash). Nostalgia, Ultra deserves any success it gets. put the flag on the moon? Is marriage between man and woman? Liberal sentiments or conspiratorial drivel? He doesn’t yet have the personality or patina to make the ambiguity signify on its own. What Ocean could say better are doubts beyond whose skirt his hand is up: did the U.S. He’s compelling in both modes though, especially when he stumbles upon a correlative for his restlessness as fetching as the MGMT sample on “Nature Calls,” a song in which he admits, “I’ve been meaning to fuck you in the garden/We’ve been breathin’ so hard we both could use the oxygen.” Ray Parker, Jr. Sin and salvation - does it get more R&B than this? Speaking of which, “Hotel California” serves as the exoskeleton for a crucial track, which is appropriate: the Eagles were the original Wu-Tang Clan. On one hand, Ocean can ask, “Is it really wrong that I want to be your baby daddy/Is that a love crime?” over a deflated piano melody and an outro sample of a pissed off woman letting her man have it on the other, he’s begging for novocaine from a lady dentist to numb the pain of said swinishness. This member of the Odd Future collective specializes in spare, slivery tracks in which admissions of swinish behavior and professions of love intermingle, uneasily. You know what? For once, it might even be Coldplay.I haven’t heard an R&B album* this year as fulsome as Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia, Ultra. I’m enjoying this, but I don’t know whether it’s the context, or the music, or the edgy subject matter, or Hotel California. I suppose I’m at the end of this ramble, and in truth, I still haven’t really drawn much of a conclusion or opinion that I can explain and encapsulate in a sentence. Not just of the rest of Ocean’s work on this album, but of sample culture in general. To not understand that is to be ignorant. If Henley & Co.’s grievances are real – I think that’s sad – because American Wedding is astute, and genuinely, in my eyes, an homage. I actually think it is the perfect choice of track to saunter behind Ocean’s slumped realisation of the devaluation of modern union. The alleged furore over American Wedding – which uses The Eagles’ Hotel California as its backing track – might have been spun to draw media attention to Ocean. Perhaps more so than with the music itself. It’s imagery, and a little bit of satire.” I like to hear poetry, which is more often fantasy and surreality than it is truth, so I kind of identified with that sentiment. I liked Ocean’s comments that there was no pretence, and that he didn’t feel forced to author a biographical album: “People think that with a recording artist that shit has to be like a fucking play by play of their whole life, but it’s not. Hence I don’t really feel like the substantial samples take any of the individuality away from a record that will be the signatory cult classic for Ocean, whether or not he continues to make successful music. The tracks are gritty and thoughtful, and a lot of thought has clearly been put into the collage of sounds. There’s a lot of intelligence thereafter. I much prefer Ocean’s wistful lyrics to the original and he makes great use of the sample to create the right atmosphere, and the right starting-point for a ‘nostalgic’ album. The opener – a cover of Coldplay’s Strawberry Swing – is my favourite track. Any album, or mixtape rather, that contains tracks named synonymously with two of my favourite ever video games (and one I am told is rather good) is worth our time here today! I’m not sure I even know what a mixtape is in an artistic context then again I might just have sussed it thanks to nostalgia, ULTRA… I think I’ll term it “heavily-excused plagiarism”. Imma ’bout as black as Cliff Richard, and as retro as space boots, so when it comes to R ‘n’ B, and mixtape culture, I don’t really know where to start. ![]() Part of the “ 30 Day Challenges: The Album Club” post series
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