Frank Ocean Discusses New Album
Posted by George H. Sirois on 11.14.2011
And why he passed on a Kanye West collaboration…
Frank Ocean, who had to cancel his NYC show because of an illness and afterward performed new songs from his second album in the UK, spoke with BBC 1xtra about his upcoming album and why he passed on a collaboration with Kanye West. Here are some highlights:
The status of his second album: "The record is written, we're just trying to tie up all the production. Get everything sonically pleasing to me. When I started writing this record that was one of the things I said. I wanted to be able to perform well, for it to transition to stage well... It feels good, they work out well. I wanted it to be an expansion, sonically I wanted to be the next, whatever the next tier for me is, be that. Just open up, challenging song structures, challenging a lot of the things I made on the last project."
On passing up the chance to work with Kanye West: "I said, 'As much as I want to work with you... I kind of want to do this without you. I kind of want this to be done without you. I kind of want to do it on my own.'"
On not sticking to one sound or one genre: "When I say the whole 'I'm not an R&B artist' thing, people often think I'm taking a shot at the genre of R&B, which to me I'll say, 'Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, D'Angelo who is awesome, I mean what is Prince? What are all of them?'"
