Ocean follows up Endless with another surprise full-length featuring Beyoncé, Kanye West, Andre 3000 and more.
Frank Ocean has released his second album of the week, Blond. The 17-track album follows the release of visual album Endless, which landed on Friday (August 19).
As the The Verge reports, Blond is an Apple Music exclusive for two weeks, and features Beyoncé, Kanye West, Andre 3000, Pharell Williams, Tyler, The Creator, Jamie xx, James Blake and Rick Rubin.
According to Pitchfork, the cover artwork was shot by Wolfgang Tillmans, whose track ‘Device Control’ closed Endless.
Originally titled Boys Don’t Cry, the album was first announced by Ocean in April 2015. Reports suggested it was intended for release on August 5, but sources close to The Verge say that Ocean and his team pushed the album back after a report from The New York Times lost them the element of surprise.
Billboard journalist Steven J. Horowitz reports that Ocean distributed his long-awaited zine Boys Don’t Cry at pop-up locations in New York, London, Chicago and Los Angeles.
The zine reportedly lists a full roster of album contributors, including Kendrick Lamar, David Bowie, The Beatles, Brian Eno, post-punk group Gang of Four, Elliott Smith, Yung Lean and blog house hero SebastiAn.
As pointed out by The Fader, the digital and physical versions of Frank Ocean’s Blond album differ.
The versions were hinted out at Ocean himself on Tumblr last year and again on the track ‘Nikes’, taken from the album.
Writer Steven J. Horowitz shared the tracklist from the physical version (included in copies of the Boys Don’t Cry magazine) on Twitter. It’s shorter by five tracks and includes ‘Mitsubishi Sony’ and ‘Easy’ as exclusives, while ‘Facebook Story’, ‘Close To You’, ‘Good Guy’, ‘Self Control’, ‘Nikes’, and ‘Be Yourself’ are exclusive to the digital version.
Track list:
Pretty sweet
Mitsubishi sony
Ivy
Pink & white
Solo
Easy
Skyline to
Night.s
White Ferrari
Seigfried
Godspeed
Futura Free— steven j. horowitz (@speriod) August 20, 2016
Listen to Blond on Apple Music.
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