The Trouble With Blondes
Frank Ocean’s long awaited album formerly called “Boys Don’t Cry,” then later changed to “Blonde” was released on August 20. This release was an immediate follow-up to his industry release of the short film “Endless.” This release was done to solidify Frank’s contract with his labels Universal Record and Def Jam. However, Ocean released “Blonde” on his own and was a fire on his industry, as they did not receive any revenue on the album. He instead released it under his own label, surprisingly named Boys Don’t Cry. Universal Records and Def Jam soon shot back with a lawsuit and were able to get Blonde off of music streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify.
The Case The main reason for this lawsuit is believed to be that Def Jam had put $2 million into the recording and production of what they believed would be Frank’s new album after the long four year wait since his last album, Channel Orange. However, what they got was Endless; a short film with the music from what would have been Boys Don’t Cry over it and without their featured artist even appearing directly in the film. Also, without a means or service on which to buy Endless, Def Jam did not make any money on Frank’s release- which was originally meant to solidify his contract. It is believed that Frank used this money to instead produce and release Endless, while also starting his own record label (now called Boys Don’t Cry). This label produced his full length album Blonde, which was released presumably without Def Jam’s knowledge. Before the lawsuit Def Jam had reached out to music streaming services that took on Blonde such as Apple music, TIdal, and Spotify, and had it removed for as long as possible.
An underwhelming attempt as Frank and his team negotiated to re-include Blonde to Spotify’s vast collection of albums. Even with Blonde’s astounding popularity hitting top charts all over the world, you will not find any advertisements from Spotify for the release of Blonde like other artists. This is possibly due to the way Spotify is treated like something of a punching bag by big name labels. This is due to the lack of royalty payments by some artists and or their labels this and the massive amount of private members without premium, meaning that they may still use the service and listen to music including the app, only using the app you may only listen to playlists with 15 or more songs on shuffle with only 5 skips per hour. Yet, this would still be more than enough to listen to the 17 tracks long Blonde. Frank has also as of this week added Blonde back to Apple music. This is due to a new deal Frank has struck with Apple to allow him to continue working and releasing music in a way that makes everyone happy allowing creative and expressive freedom. As well as a fair and logical way for everybody to get paid equally for Frank’s multimillion dollar album streaming currently as it was immediately placed at number one on Billboard 200.
So the lawsuit? It is believed that Frank perhaps took an advance from apple to help pay back his former associates as Def Jam and releasing their hold on him and his works.
Blonde Review After Frank’s release of Channel Orange on July of 2010 fans, as well as his label, have been waiting on his next hit album. After months of setbacks and change of dates Frank released Blonde on August 20, a 17 track album over any streaming and digital copies. However frank also released a 12 track physical album under the same name. Both albums include most of the same songs only the physical track does not have three adlib tracks nor Futa Free. Nights is also under a new name, Night/s and includes two other tracks Mitsubishi Story and Easy. Though Easy may not have been released as the lyrics come with the physical copy of the album found in the Boys Don’t Cry magazine that comes with the physical album.
Blonde as a whole is a melodic symphony that flows well with Frank’s strong singing voice. It is, through and through a story of his life and his years spent through college to relationships past and present as well as with his mother. Presumably one of his tracks represents a toxic relationship that ended off clean, perhaps a testament to Frank’s relationship with Def Jam. This is White Ferrari co-written with John Lennon, James Litherland, and Paul McCartney. Just a few out of the extensive list of big name co-writers found on this album like Beyonce, Pharrell Williams, Tyler the Creator, John Lennon and Ringo Starr. Though I’m not doing all that much to remain unbiased to the release of this album I do so feeling strongly that even if it is just one song that there is a song for everybody. No matter your preference in genre I feel as though you can find a song in this album even just one but it will be one that you would love. I feel this is what Frank was aiming for through the course of creating Blonde.
In the end, I feel he hit his mark.
