Vinyl records are not a thing of the past, they are quite a necessity for music lovers these days. Frank Ocean, who has released pressings for his Blonde and Endless albums, knows this more than any artist. His Grammy-winning debut Channel Orange has yet to be issued for a vinyl release, but that could be changing soon.
As the centerfold of the DAZED summer 2019 issue, the mysterious creator was drilled by industry tastemakers about his everything from childhood memories and favorite cereal to existing as a queer male in the industry and ending his deal with Def Jam following Endless.
Ocean also answered the million dollar question about the vinyl arrival of his Channel Orange LP, stating it’s going to be released “ASAP.”
Read exclusive excerpts from his rare interview below.
On favorite childhood memory….
Watching figure-skating with my great-grandmother when I was around two years old.
On favorite cereal…
I love super-sugary cereal like Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Apple Cinnamon Cheerios – but I don’t really eat ’em any more because they’re super-sugary. Haha.
On climate change concerns…
I don’t share the sense of dread, no. I try to lessen my personal impact and the impact of my business where I can. But I do worry about the great sense of entitlement society has at this point when it comes to technological innovation. A lot of us just blindly expect either this generation or a future generation of bright minds to resolve the problem. A lot of the people who expect this salvation aren’t the people attempting to solve the problems that we face, and probably don’t know anyone personally who is attempting to solve these problems.
On Escaping Def Jam deal….
Eyy, Peggy! You know, it’s funny talking about it these days because I couldn’t really tell anybody anything for a couple of years. Couldn’t tell anyone at the label, obviously. But I also couldn’t talk with anyone at Apple because the industry is too small and it would’ve gotten back to the label for sure. So I kept it to myself and a few in my circle. I carried my hard drives around with me when I traveled because I used to not store anything online. Those drives became a physical representation of the stakes. If the files had leaked, everything would have worked out very differently for me. When August came around and both projects were uploaded I felt the euphoria, yeah, but mostly I just needed to sleep. I probably slept something like 15 hours.
On the difference between moniker and stage name:
Christopher is a triangle wave. Frank is a pulse wave. I’m a little synthesizer. Xo
