Frank Ocean

Name: Christopher 'Francis' Ocean (Born Christopher Edwin Breaux)

Date Of Birth: October 28th 1987 (Age 29)

Origin: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

Personal Background

Frank Ocean grew up around New Orleans local jazz scene, he also used to like listening to his mothers CDs when on her car stereo when they were going on a trip. It was clear from a young age that Ocean took a lot of interest into different elements of different genres of music. As a teenager he used to sing in neighbourhood chores. He then started to save up money so that he could rent time in the local music studio and start recording and producing some of his own tracks. He recalls all the different lengths he would go to in order to get his time in the studio; "Oh man I had numerous hustles...Washing cars was one of them, and mowing lawns and walking dogs." Eventually in 2005 he enrolled in the University of New Orleans. 

Career

After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 and destroyed Ocean's recording facility he moved to LA. In order to continue with his music career, he planned to stay only for a short period of time. However, after establishing connections with people in the music industry he extended his stay to try and progress his career as much as possible. He began with pursue a deal in song writing. He started working with other record producers and wrote songs for various artists such as Justin Bieber, John Legend, Brandy and Beyoncé. It came to a point where he felt this was not the top of his career, he said "There was a point where I was composing for other people, and it might have been comfy to continue to do that and enjoy that income stream and anonymity. But that's not why I moved away from school and my family. Ocean had already worked with extremely well known and well respected artists such as Nas and Pharelle Williams. Due to his friendship with Tyler The Creator, a member of Hip Hop collective Odd Future, in 2009 Frank Ocean joined the LA based group. It was not until late 2009, when Ocean finally signed a record deal with Def Jam Recordings as a solo artist after coming into contact with Tricky Stewart.

2 years later on February 18th 2011, he release his first mix tape: 'nostalgia, ULTRA', it became critically acclaimed launching Oceans career into success. It was centred around interpersonal relationships, personal reflection and social commentary. After the launch of the mix tape, Ocean became widely known and it led him to collaborations with huge artists such as Jay-Z and Kanye West. He featured on their collaborative album; 'Watch The Throne' and not only featured but also co-wrote the tracks 'No Church In The Wild' and 'Made In America'.

The first appearance made by Frank Ocean was in the music video for 'She' by Tyler The Creator featuring himself.

The first performance he did was with Odd Future in 2011 at Coachella Festival. He later joined them on their tour across the east coast of the US.

Def Jam Records announced on May 19th 2011 that 'nostalgia, ULTRA' would be released again but as an EP. First came the release of 'Novacane' on ITunes as the first single from the EP in May 2011.

In 2012, Ocean released his debut studio album 'Channel Orange'. It was vote 'Album of The Year' in HMV's polls. It also earned six Grammy nominations. He was credited for moving the RnB genre in a new, more challenging direction. His songs were noted for their story telling, social commentary and a dense musical fusion of Hip-Hop, Soul and RnB. His song 'Forrest Gump' received a large amount of attention, as it revealed to the world that Ocean's first love was a man. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200. He promoted his album with his summer tour and appearances at Coachella and Lollapalooza Festival.   

 For a long period of time Frank Ocean flew under the radar. He deleted all social media accounts and stayed out of the public eye until August 2016. During the early months of 2016, there was lots of rumors about Ocean releasing a new album. It was not until July that he confirmed there would in fact be a second studio album. He hinted that it would be released the same month. The month had passed and there was still no sign of the album or the official release dates. All the fans had was the image above, creating ideas of the release date. On August 1st at about 3AM, Ocean posted an endless live stream of a warehouse on Apple Music. It showed him doing woodwork and playing instrumentals on loop. It was not until the release of his visual album 'Endless' that the instrumentals from the live stream were for this album. However fans were still left waiting for the release of his official second studio album. Finally on August 20th the highly anticipated 'Blonde' was released. Fans made their excitement clear as an album that they had been waiting on for 4 years had finally arrived.