Blond(e) — Coming Out of the Closet as Human

Frank Ocean's "Blond" Album poster

“How far is a light year?” The last lyrics of Future Free, the final track of Frank Ocean’s 17 song album, Blonde, asks us just how far this metric of distance really is. The question presented to us at the very end of the album, but one that has already been answered in the hour long journey leading up to this final moment. So how far is a light year? It’s a measurement where the limits of time and space and everything we know to be tangible metrics collapse upon each other in an almost impossible to conceptualize distance. A light year; the radical version of queerness that Ocean floats through with us in Blonde as he grapples with navigating heartbreak and loss as well as the way these things have and continue to shape his identity — the ambiguity of which is only matched by that of his lovers in the album itself.

Listen to the full album at Blonded's YT Channel

It’s no secret that Frank Ocean is a notoriously private person despite his stardom. Ambiguity is a part of his public persona. A common misconception that Frank Ocean is bisexual — a label within the LGBTQ+ community that refers to loving both men and women. While it is true that Ocean remains open about the fact that he holds deep affections for both men and women, he has, thus far, refused to formally label himself as bisexual. For an artist that completely changed the way that the rap/hip-hop and R&B community viewed LGBTQ+ people, he absolutely refuses to label himself as one particular thing — a radical sentiment that is reflected particularly in Blonde itself, and one that drew me into his work in middle school as I was figuring out who I was, in senior year of high school as I was (still) figuring myself out, and one that has particularly stuck with my in college as I continue to expand beyond what I could have ever thought myself to be. Even to say that Frank Ocean is queer — a term that comes from a derogatory context that hinges on the meaning of the word itself as “weird” that has been reclaimed to refer to the LGBTQ+ community as a whole — would be to put a label on him that he has yet to put on himself (although I am guilty of doing this for ease of writing this). On the cover of the album, the title is spelled with the masculine counterpart of the word “Blond”. I will hereby refer to the album as Blond(e) in order to acknowledge the importance of this interchangeability of masculine and feminine, as it runs thematically and lyrically throughout the album. Much like the album title, Ocean seemingly addresses the amalgamation of his past lovers — both feminine and masculine — as one person throughout the album, never taking a moment to clarify where we are talking about a different person. The few hints that we get that the person Ocean is addressing has changed are through the use of a different gendered term than the last, from referring to being “the boyfriend in your wet dreams tonight” to saying “here’s to the gay bars you took me to” (Ocean). Blond(e)’s unflinching refusal to identify or define itself has led it to become one of the most radical queer works of all time, and continues to show us how conformity can limit us in our quest for acceptance.

Craig Jenkens’ New York Times review “Frank Ocean’s Blonde Considers Identity, Sexuality, and the Roads Not Taken” provides a great insight into the alternative and outside of the norm nature that permeates the album. The official label of Blond(e)’s genre is “alternative R&B”. However, much more explicitly but in the same spirit as Ocean himself, Jenkins expresses a discontent for even the labelling of Blond(e) and Frank’s other bodies of work as “alternative R&B”, as he states that, “The enduring crime of ‘alternative R&B’ as a descriptor is that black music always left space for the rock stripes of Miguel; the psychedelic, post-apocalyptic new wave of Janelle Monae; and the bedroom introspection of Syd and the Internet.” Musically, Blond(e) is a work that both completely exists within the culture of “black music” but also others itself at the same time. Jenkens notes the enormous amount of highly influential hip-hop producers such as Pharrell Williams and Rick Rubin that contributed to Blond(e), but the almost complete lack of identifiable drum beats within Blond(e)’s music that categorize standard hip-hop and R&B music. There have been many other albums that have transcended these genres arguably even more and have been allowed to stay within the classifications of standard hip-hop and R&B simply because they do not break the rules in the manner that Ocean does — Frank Ocean’s close friend, Tyler, the Creator’s work being a great example of such. [“Tyler slept on my sofa, yeah, n****s go back that far” (Ocean)] His album Flower Boy has the classification of standard hip-hop. However, Tyler’s much more explicitly queer work, Igor, has also received the “alternative” label. While hip-hop, rap, and R&B have always been about defiance against the rules and limitations put on others, it historically and notoriously had been a place that was not welcoming towards queerness unless presented in a way that was degrading towards their existence. In the 90s and even the early 2000s, the use of the word “faggot” in songs was not an uncommon word choice. Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, The Game, and T.I are just amongst a few rappers who have used the word in their music, pointing to a larger acceptance within the community at the time of using derogatory language towards queer people. While black gay men and drag queens have been at the very heart and foundation of the modern queer community, hip-hop has historically and popularly held a sort of contempt towards queerness — something that is seen as effeminate and therefore degrading to the image of hyper-masculinity that hip-hop pushed. Ocean and Tyler were both instrumental artists in the change of this attitude. Defining their queer works as alternative or outside the norm is the unfortunate remnant of these old sentiments, but to define their work as such because of one facet of its existence is to ignore how entrenched it is within its genre and culture. If black music has always left space for the influences, rule-breaking, and discussion that Ocean’s work has exhibited, and if Blond(e) has been considered one of the greatest works of all time especially for black artists, then why must we other it and its importance simply because it truly defies convention? It is in spite of and because of this continuing theme of defiance of convention in favor of being who you truly are in Ocean’s musical work, his public persona, and especially Blond(e) that he has become the revolutionary figure that he is. 

Be Yourself, the fourth song and first interlude on Blond(e), is the first explicit presentation of the importance of being fully, authentically yourself in the album. “To be yourself is all that you can do,” isn’t it? (Ocean). Throughout the album, Another album review by Kevin Allread entitled “Frank Ocean’s queer revolution: How Blond(e) asks us to see queerness as the new normal” examines more of the light-year version of queerness that Frank Ocean presents in Blond(e) — one that is “unattached to identity but solidly grounded in experience and the concept of unknowability.” (Allread) It’s important to note that Ocean’s sophomore album does not deal with struggles of being queer in and of itself. Instead, “Blonde surveys the messy scene outside of Channel Orange’s [Ocean’s first album] busted closet door…” and becomes an even heavier examination on the role of Ocean’s sexuality on the other facets of his life and identity, introspecting on Ocean’s journey in figuring out where he lies in a heteronormative society and just how far outside of the norm he can step. (Jenkens) Ocean grapples with feeling like he should just want “two kids and a swimming pool”, a lyric that is continually referenced throughout the album and refers to the traditional American ideal of success — a wife, kids, a white picket fence, and the money to own a swimming pool in your backyard (Ocean).

In Siegfried, the fifteenth song on the album, he breaks away from this idea, exclaiming that “I’d rather live outside” of all of that (Ocean). The moment that leads to the realization that he would rather not allow himself to be confined to the ideal of what he should want and be comes just moments earlier within the song, as he laments that “he’s been living in an idea, an idea from another man’s mind”. Ocean realizes with this statement the impossibility of living authentically as oneself when living in the idea of what others think life should be. This is not what he wants, it’s simply what he has been told to want by others. But, aside from the immediate context, the realization also speaks to a larger context within Blond(e) of not forcing yourself to fit in with anything — including the conventions of queerness. “Frank Ocean’s new album is queer as fuck but never through explicit identification — rather through the rejection of the very notion of identity.” (Allread) He goes further to point out that Ocean goes out of his way to affirm that being queer, strange, or odd can only be defined as such when looking in the perspective of the “limiting, normative rubrics to begin with.” The very act of labelling, to Ocean, is a limitation placed on queer people by themselves. By labelling ourselves as different with words that have been created through the perspective of heteronormativity, we define ourselves as another instead of defining ourselves as human.

In “The Limits of Labelling: Incidental Sex Work Among Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Young Men on Social Media,” Max Morris examines the relationship between prostitution and queer labelling. Homosexuality, as Morris tells us, historically came to light as a term in order to broadly describe any sexual minority or deviance. Incidentally, prostitution came to find itself underneath this label as a form of sexual deviance. But, as we have reached a new age of attempting for legal equality, these terms have turned into “queer” and “sex work”. Morris points out that, as socially perceived “sexual deviances”, the stigmatization of the two identities are relatively the same and the specific labels that have grown underneath them as a result.

These labels, however, are not as entirely popular as we can think— Frank Ocean himself being a great example of one such person who rejects the labeling of such. In terms of what Morris calls “Incidental Sex Work” amongst gay, bisexual, and queer young men, one participant in his study expresses his dislike for that labelling, stating that, “I don’t see any need to give it a name…If you did people’s hair every now and again, you wouldn’t call yourself an incidental hairdresser. It’s just a thing that you do.” Because of the similar nature of the stigmatization of queer identities and sex work, the same logic very easily applies for Ocean and many others when it comes to the application of labels onto their identities.

For Ocean, the gender of who he loves does not matter — it collapses. Many others in the study go on to express an extremely similar discontent with even the labels of gay, bisexual, or queer — for the rigidity and social ideas surrounding labels such as “sex worker” or “gay”, for many, don’t even being to properly cover the complexity of the human experience in regards to sexuality. Frank Ocean’s view on labelling isn’t a popular concept. In fact, it’s radical in its refusal to accept a label. Historically, the reason that more specific labels than just “homosexual” came about was the need for community in a time where homosexuality and genderqueerness was prosecuted and witch hunted. Gay men and lesbian women could find and protect each other through the use of a single distinction. In modern queer spaces, there has been a growing push for definition in these labels as a way to allow others to understand your identities or sexual preferences. We have come to a point where the mere definition of labels and what people have to fit into cause discourse within the community that we are trying to protect ourselves with. Even in my personal experience, the rules of how you have to exist within something have become an oppressive force in their own right. Personally identifying as simply queer and she/they, I have had people tell me that I am bisexual (“No, they’re pansexual because they would date non-binary people” “She’s omnisexual! They recognize the gender of their partners.”) I have had people tell me I am non-binary, even that I am transgender because I am not the gender I was at birth. All of this in spite of my protests that I don’t necessarily connect with these experiences or feel that these words can define me. The need for people to put my humanity in a box in order to understand me, especially other queer people, has led to a feeling that I am, in fact, an outsider to the community that is supposed to make space for me to be proud of who I am. Pushing labels and firm definitions on other people forces them to conform to an ideal of human sexuality and defies even the original purpose and function of labelling — there was a time in which queer people, when asked how they identify themselves, would name five different things that they feel describe them (many of which were or  would come to be slurs or offensive terms). It’s this culture that has caused people to like me, Frank Ocean, and the men in Morris’ study to push back against this expectation and this form of conformity.

Blond(e) is about the light year of distance. That impossibility of conceptualizing, whether it’s the distance outside of the norm that one exists, the distance between people and experience, or the distance between gender. But Ocean collapses all of the different things that make his experience unique from us through his ambiguity. What matters about the difference between all of the people that he has loved when his experience with them has been his love and yearning for them? Why must they be addressed in his art as separate people when his experiences with them have continued to come together throughout his life to teach him the lessons about life that he imparts on us in Blond(e)? Most importantly, in the end, what is the difference between man and woman when we have the shared human experience of loving someone? Much like light years, the genitalia of Ocean’s lovers and Ocean himself have always defined them and pitted them on two separate sides of a binary that is impossible to conceptualize the distance of in society. But when we ground the difference within our own experience, we are all just flesh and we are all just human.

No matter the gender of who Frank Ocean is singing about, we can all connect to the heartbroken feeling of reminiscing on someone that we loved that he sings about in White Ferrari. “I care for you still and I will, forever.” (Ocean). We can all connect to feeling like an other sometimes — maybe even to questioning whether or not the idea of “two kids and a swimming pool” is the ideal of life for us. And when we all are an other at some point or another, why do we have to label others as being queerer than the rest of us? The context doesn’t matter. Our humanity does. Ocean urges us through his ambiguity and refusal to define himself or his work to collapse the context that is the perceived “norms” that we have all placed upon ourselves. You can not change a system from within. So, when we stop trying to define and label ourselves using the rules set by the very thing that perceives us as “queer”, then there is no queerness to love.

Works Cited:

Allred, Kevin. “Frank Ocean’s Queer Revolution: How ‘Blond(e)’ Asks Us to See Queerness as the New Normal.” Salon, Salon.com, 25 Aug. 2016, www.salon.com/2016/08/23/frank-oceans-queer-revolution-how-blonde-asks-us-to-see-queerness-as-the-new-normal/.

Morris, Max. “The Limits of Labelling: Incidental Sex Work among Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Young Men on Social Media.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy, vol. 18, 19 June 2021, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-021-00603-9. 

Jenkins, Craig. “Album Review: Frank Ocean’s Blonde Considers Identity, Sexuality, and the Roads Not Taken.” New York, 2016, www.proquest.com/docview/1900201569?pq-origsite=primo&sourcetype=Magazines.