What Frank Ocean Said to Make People Think He’s Retiring
Grammy Award-winning musician Frank Ocean has remained characteristically quiet in the years since the release of his sophomore album Blonde in 2016. In late 2022, the Channel Orange artist opened up about where his career stands today, not just in music, and seemingly hinted that he was ready to move past the world of music, naturally sending fans into a frenzy.
Frank Ocean released his sophomore album ‘Blonde’ in 2016
Frank Ocean joined the hip-hop collective Odd Future at the turn of the last decade and got to work on launching his music career. He released his debut mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra, in 2011; his debut studio album Channel Orange came out the following year. Channel Orange earned Grammy Award nominations for Album of the Year and Best Urban Contemporary Album, taking home the top honor for Best Urban Contemporary Album.
In 2016, Ocean returned with the release of the visual-only project Endless. He released his second studio album Blonde the following day. Blonde was Ocean’s first number-one album on the Billboard 200 albums chart and was certified platinum with over one million copies sold. He opted not to submit it for Grammy Award consideration, telling The New York Times “that institution certainly has nostalgic importance… It just doesn’t seem to be representing very well for people who come from where I come from, and hold down what I hold down.”
Frank Ocean was once believed to be retiring
Since the release of Blonde, Ocean has been focused on other ventures including his Blonded Radio station, his Homer jewelry company, and his debut feature film with A24. In December 2022, Ocean gave a rare interview with The Week where he discussed Homer’s growing popularity and his current focus on the brand.
“It’s funny because one of the things that was important for me especially with this kind of project was to counteract what I feel is popular today, that is being everywhere and everything for everyone all at once. Not the movie [Everything Everywhere All at Once] but yeah, this type of multiverse multi-discipline multi-task artist,” Ocean explained.
“We did not end up counteracting it totally, as our heads still do spin and we’re interested in so much. But for now, we make diamonds, and no telling what next,” he said.
“Twenty years of my life was about song-writing and recording music. I’d been in the studio since I was 12-and-a-half years old,” he continued. “My assumption was that some of what I developed in one field of art and business would be useful in the next field, but I still wanted to know more about exactly what I was doing before I did it.”
His comments upset fans across social media, who took his words to mean that he had mentally moved on from music and was focusing exclusively on Homer and other projects.
Frank Ocean is booked for Coachella 2023
It’s likely that fans will get new Frank Ocean music in 2023, however. Ocean was booked to headline Coachella in 2020 before the festival was cancelled due to the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. But Ocean is currently slated to be headlining the 2023 edition of the festival.
Given that artists often have albums ready to release when taking the stage for big performances like music festivals or the Super Bowl halftime show, Ocean might have music in the vault for fans next year.
