When Endless debuted, the raw materials first seen on became a series of boxes that were eventually stacked upon one another, forming something bigger. In the clips on his website and in Endless, Ocean was building something more metaphorical than a table or an ottoman or an album. There was no album available, just the video - no song breaks, no clarity, no traditional product to unpack. Their titles rolled in the closing credits. Frank, it seemed, had programmed his construction-working clip and made a short film about process while fans took in new songs. The Apple Music video ended after 45 minutes, and was quickly tagged a “visual album,” a pernicious term that rose to great heights with Beyoncé’s Lemonade and has only sunk since. But to the many people for whom Channel Orange is a significant artistic document of the decade, this felt like an event.Įndless, it turns out, was an event - just not the event. It was, after all, Ocean’s first public effort in 1,501 days, since the release of his 2012 debut album, Channel Orange. At The Ringer, we treated the release like Game 7 of the NBA Finals - bringing in all the voices and ideas in an effort to collectively understand this article of media. They were directed to Apple Music, where a new project would appear - a new video contained on the platform, starring a still woodshopping Ocean and featuring the new songs in full. Fans and media snapped to, parsing confusion, sifting through miasma, and crafting takes. (A table? A wall? An ark?) Some 24 hours later, the video suddenly began to play music. The video played like Fellini’s Tool Time, as black-and-white images of a man wielding a level like a lance and operating a high-powered saw were cast out to an unwitting public. But still, there was the video, streaming on his site. A report from The New York Times about an impending new release allegedly spooked Ocean, who pushed back his new project to an unknown date. When an endlessly looping video appeared on the singer-songwriter’s website on August 1, hundreds of days after the first release date for his new album was promised, it was a surprise, but not a shock.
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