Like many Ocean songs, "Ivy" is at once direct and ambiguous: it takes you into the feeling but gives little away in terms of situation. We're not telling the stories to ourselves, we know the story, we're just seeing it in flashes overlaid."
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"How we experience memory sometimes, it's not linear. "That was my version of collage or bricolage," Ocean told the New York Times' Jon Caramanica last November. The lyric is about memory - of a first love affair, a long-standing friendship now gone - related in a voice that is, at times, sped up to sound younger to fit the theme. "Ivy" is constructed around two contrasting guitar figures: a simple beatless arrangement. The second track of Blonde, "Ivy", begins with the briefest of tremolo guitar melodies, before the voice comes in crooning, "I thought that I was dreaming when you said you love me." The rest of the chorus deals with the old duality of love and hate, "I could hate you right now / It's quite alright to hate me now." In the verse, Ocean gets down to the heart of it, "We didn't give a f*** back then / I ain't a kid no more / We'll never be those kids again." His wish not to be defined or to be pinned down, allied to his profligate talent, is reminiscent of Prince and, like that inspirational figure, he dictates his terms and defines his time.
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In Ocean's case, it fit his wish not to play the music industry game: previous difficulties with Def Jam Records have put him on the path to digital self-releasing - a practice he has used with his first mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra and his latest album (it's written as Blond on the artwork, but has come to be spelled with an "e"). Withdrawal is a time-honoured pop tactic that only favours the very successful and the most alluring. "The internet made fame wack," he posted way back in 2011, "and anonymity cool." Bar a few live dates over the years, he was nearly invisible until 2016, until the release of his second studio album, Blonde. Thoroughly at home with the possibilities of the third wave technological revolution, he was also familiar with its downside. Read more: Frank Ocean's new album, Blond, reviewed (spoiler: it was worth the 4 year wait)īy the time this photo was taken, Ocean was one of the hottest properties in music but he was on the point of disappearance.
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Like many pop artists, he has refused to explicitly identify himself as homosexual or bisexual or heterosexual - a position entirely in keeping with his precise yet elusive aesthetic. He received nothing but support from Odd Future members like Tyler, The Creator, but the ensuing media furore only exacerbated his tendency towards seclusion and withdrawal. Ocean's post dropped a bomb in the rigid, often macho world of hip hop within which, as a member of the Odd Future collective, he had participated for several years.