Frank Ocean Duality

Frank Ocean is an innovative contemporary rap artist who has written songs for and performed with such musical talents as Jay Z and Kanye West. He has been covered by The New York Times and Rolling Stone Magazine and his first single album debuted at number one in 2012. As an artist Ocean has boldly engaged his audiences on challenging and controversial topics and is credited with having taken the rap genre in a direction that fuses hip hop, soul and rhythm and blues in a fresh new direction. In his song “Chanel”, Frank Ocean explores the duality of his lover’s bisexuality and specifically examines the juxtaposition of femininity and masculinity and societal expectations of black males. He questions the spectrum of sexual expression and identification

In his music video for “Nike”, he can be seen wearing eyeliner, lipstick, and glitter, which at a minimum is seen as bending the conventional gender roles for men. This is similar to the androgynous attire worn by Prince, whom Frank Ocean has cited as a source of inspiration in both his music and beliefs in gender conformity. Conversely, in his song “Pyramids” from his 2012 debut studio album Channel ORANGE, he recounts a lost female love who had been reduced from a respected African Queen in his own estimation, to a stripper after leaving him for another man. Ocean is thus no stranger to expressing both his femininity and

Nevertheless, Ocean maintains the minimalistic instrumental style that has characterized his style since his 2012 debut album. The instrumental of the song serves its bare minimum purpose of supplying support for Frank Ocean’s vocals. Ocean’s singing also becomes louder in the second verse, which matches the increasingly heavy instrumental which is augmented by the addition of background vocals and a flute. Ocean may have done this consciously to ensure that the instrumental would not be overpowering, and that his singing would remain the dominant element carrying the song like with his other music. Also worth noting in the second verse, Ocean emphasizes the first word of every line by using a higher