Infinite Loop - Endless: Frank Ocean by Leeroy Ruwizhi
After nostalgia, ULTRA in 2011, came Channel Orange with a year's delay. An album that benchmarked rhythm and blues, even Chris Brown who falls short of the genre wanted to fight. What stood out were the black nouveau riche references, mentions of Ladera Heights being the peak.This was the mature stage in the life cycle of the elusive, but prodigious artist. Somewhat an account of lived and perceived experiences.
Endless starts off with a skit to ease the listener into gramophone and velvet loafers feels. The first track with Frank Ocean's vocals is a cover of a cover. It's Aaliyah covering the Isley Brothers. A loop of a loop. A copy of a copy. Endless, right? He digs deeper into an introspective abyss until he finds his childhood, as reflected on Alabama in which he recounts a teenage mom fighting a sister-in-law all laid over Sampha inspired piano pangs. It's returning to the rudimentary life experiences that helped formulate his character.
It's going back to the earliest point in the life cycle of the artist. Some of the experiences reminded him of how socially, financially and sexually marginalised to the point he donned an invisibility cloak. The album comes off as a sonic rage against the loop he is stuck in, a static world which still maintains its hostility towards certain groups of people inhabiting it. For example, bisexuals. He is looking to break it through creating music. A quick cut to the visuals in which he is in a warehouse doing carpentry, it kind of resembles the amount of time he puts into his craft. Eventually he assembles a black spiral staircase, it's like he hopes his music will take him out of the current frame of mind he is in, the clatter audible on 'Mine' The end of the staircase is cut off, inferring he has made it out of his confines, link an article of his new economic freedom here and how that transcendence is endless, a continual input of patience and workmanship that gets one out of whatever constraints they may be in, just to face new hurdling instances.
There is some proclivity to assume the loop to be static, Comme Des Garçons legitimizes it's dynamic state. It's a showcase of vitality, a daring drive for continuity. Ultimately, a middle finger up self righteous pricks who campaign against homosexuality after going through a poor reproductive science article clawing it's way through how the human race's continuity is doomed for embracing alternative forms of love. At this point it's lazy to deny Frank Ocean's philosophical musings after insert Tumblr post one about spinning in a room it's possible the self proclaimed deity is hinting at the dated concept of evolution, but from an artistic perspective. He had been struggling with writer's block until a conversation with a childhood friend took him back to a certain memory and revitalized his pen. He undeniably proves there is growth where we look down on and rather choose not to engage certain bitter memories. You have to be some kind of immortal to pick scabs off healed wounds and let the bleeding paint an illustrious narrative of a young black bisexual man. More so in a world that is against Black people and queers. Could this growth, the search deep into ourselves be what's endless? If not, enjoy and maybe relate to some of the pensive love stories of 2016.