Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’: Instant Track-by-Track Analysis

Frank Ocean is finally back in full force, with a new visual album called Endless, a standalone video, free-magazine pop-up shops, and most important, a new non-visual album. Blonde follows 2012’s acclaimed Channel Orange with more risks and detours constructed around Ocean’s natural vocal gifts and daring vision.

So Blonde is here, and so is our instant track-by-track analysis. Consider this a premature evaluation of an album we’re going to be spending a lot more time with; more importantly, it’s a guide to what listeners should look out for over the course of the album’s 17 songs.