It’s finally here! Frank Ocean released his long-awaited sophomore album, Blonde, exclusively on Apple Music and iTunes on Saturday, August 20 — and fans went wild.
The R&B singer, 28, dropped the 17-track avant-garde LP on Saturday afternoon, just hours after he treated fans to his new NSFW “Nikes” music video, and days after the release of a mixtape-esque visual album, Endless.
Blonde — which is the follow-up to Ocean’s Grammy-winning 2012 debut LP, Channel Orange — features an array of collaborators, including André 3000, James Blake, Jamie xx, Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé, who Ocean previously collaborated with on her 2013 song “Superpower.”
To celebrate the highly anticipated release, Ocean set up pop-up shops in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London, where hundreds of lucky fans received free copies of the album with an accompanying 366-page magazine publication titled Boys Don’t Cry.
The zine, which some fans are already selling on eBay for $1,000, features a collection of stunning photographs, illustrations, poems and essays by several artists, including Ocean himself. Kanye West also contributed a hilarious poem about McDonald’s: “I know them french fries have a plan / The cheeseburgers and the shakes formed a band.”
Kanye wrote a poem for the mag pic.twitter.com/uRvG3Pmaa2
— steven j. horowitz (@speriod) August 21, 2016
The “Thinkin Bout You” crooner took to Tumblr after the album’s release, where he thanked fans — in all caps — for their support.
“I HAD THE TIME OF MY LIFE MAKING ALL OF THIS,” he wrote on Saturday night. “THANK YOU ALL. ESPECIALLY THOSE OF YOU WHO NEVER LET ME ME FORGET I HAD TO FINISH. WHICH IS BASICALLY EVERY ONE OF Y’ALL. HAHA. LOVE YOU.”
Fans have been waiting years for Ocean’s return. Last year, he teased his sophomore album on Tumblr with a cryptic post, writing, “I got two versions. I got twoooo versions.” (Ocean admirers now know the two versions are Endless and Blonde.)
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