In a formulaic era, his production is impressively idiosyncratic, heavy on hazy electronics and cavernous, dubby reverb, and packed with weird touches: the melodies never quite pan out as you expect them to, while the backing shifts and changes unpredicatably.
Channel Orange’s scale and scope are impressive to behold.
The album climaxes in romantic deluge; Ocean’s magnificent delivery ensures every tearful story feels true, tangible, relatable. In throwing his emotional locker wide open, Frank Ocean has made a tender, engrossing classic.
This album is every bit as boldly conceived, brilliantly executed and irrefutably fresh as the hype has it.
Snubbing nearly every contemporary radio trend, it positions itself instead as the latest in a line of revelatory, late-period neo-soul albums
Channel Orange is a stunningly ambitious soul album that establishes Ocean as one of the most creative artists in modern popular music. It's simultaneously of the moment and an undeniable classic.
There are enough ideas here for a dozen CDs, sure to inspire plenty of copycat versions of these inventive grooves from other artists trying to follow Ocean’s magical lead.
One listen to Channel Orange makes it obvious that he is as free as an artist as he is as a man. The album doesn't have as many slyly powerful hooks as Nostalgia, Ultra, but Ocean's descriptive and subtle storytelling is taken to a higher level.
He's clearly a natural storyteller and a keen observer anyway ... What makes Channel Orange a great debut is Ocean's ability to match narrative with soundtrack.
It’s a record that takes your breath away – finally, here’s someone with the gumption to take urban music to new and fascinating heights. A brilliant, show-stealing, game-changing affair.
The 24-year-old has quickly proven himself to be among the most gifted singer-songwriters of his generation; he's got the type of voice, wit, charm, smarts, and ineffable humanity that's always hoped for, but never promised.
No matter what Ocean's mood is on the album, the songs sound fantastic.
Frank’s strengths are his versatile voice, the breadth of his songwriting capabilities, the way he mixes and matches old aesthetics and ends up with strange new combinations
Every song breathes like an individual fragment of Ocean’s personality and past, coaxed and caressed into life by his stunning voice and considered songwriting.
Frank Ocean belongs to a tiny sub-genre of artists who possess the ability to sing in falsetto about a girl smoking crack and still sound like a fucking angel.
Channel Orange is so textured, complex, and mature
This fantastic major-label debut cuts through such distractions. Like a warm, late-night limo cruise, Channel Orange is neon-lit smooth but crawls through seedy areas.
Beyond genre lines, racial lines, sexuality lines, any lines you can think of, it's that all-too-rare gem: a universal story you'll come back to long after the hype's been and gone.
Frank Ocean has placed himself above genre borders and identity labels with Channel Orange.
Channel Orange is a superbly forward-thinking piece of work that places Ocean lightyears ahead of his peers.
No expectation could have prepared listeners for how good this album is.
As Channel Ocean reaches its end, every emotion associated with it can be traced back to one: fulfilment.
channel ORANGE feels like one long, moonlit, air-conditioned ride. Songs ease from one to the next, flowing together with ambient pieces of distant movie dialogue and the sound of electronics turning on and off.
Restraint is key to the execution of Channel Orange, a neo-R&B album that, for all its layered beauty, never overwhelms.
Channel Orange is going to be the standard to beat for some time. And it might very well be the best R&B album of our young decade.
Ocean is less concerned with urban realism than with his own ‘80s-noir fantasy of what the city’s like, and his music captures that vibe perfectly, pulsing with electro-soul grooves, vintage jazz-funk, and Angelino-friendly cameos by John Mayer and Andre 3000.
channel ORANGE finds Frank Ocean rising to the challenge with a class unlike anyone in music these days.
The spaces between the hooks are of no less importance to Ocean, and on Channel Orange he opens them out and lets them breathe. Beats run on after melodies recede, lonely guitars twang away in the margins, soundscapes overlap.
The dominant sound of Channel Orange is one of "quiet storm" slow jams laid over lo-fi, broken-speaker beats. But it's far from samey.
When Ocean reins himself in, tucking his words and melodies into tighter verse-chorus structures, the songs have startling force.
A largely beatific album, it propagates love over high living, but also shipped is the urban locale ... substituted for the same precocious wisdom, emotional intelligence, writerly nuance and reasoned portrayal of lust displayed on the Tumblr post.
With Channel Orange Frank Ocean has proven himself as one of the most significant artists in popular music today.
After making a splash with his first mixtape, Frank Ocean is killing it in the world of contemporary R&B with this new album.
channel ORANGE is a solid but uneven first official release by a gifted singer-songwriter, but it’s not a game-changing album.
With a few notable exceptions, Channel ORANGE is solid rather than spellbinding
Im my opinion Channel Orange > Blond. Don't get be wrong, Blond is great. But there's something about Channel Orange. Maybe it's the way it handles so many emotions gracefully. Or how different all the songs sound. But Channel Orange always feels like an emotional journey.
Great for late night cry sessions 100/100!
My God, 600 followers! I am so grateful to each of them... it's been a long way to arrive here, but I hope that users of AOTY appreciate my honesty and fairness in giving ratings (and possibly my kindness towards everybody :) ).
In order to thank you, I would like to share the review of one very special album, "Channel Orange" by Frank Ocean, THE BEST ALBUM OF 2010s in my humble opinion.
The question may arise spontaneously: why Frank Ocean? After all, R&B has experienced other ... read more
Start- N/A
Thinkin Bout You- 9
Fertilizer- 8
Sierra Leone- 8
Sweet Life- 8
Not Just Money- N/A
Super Rich Kids feat. Earl Sweatshirt- 9
Pilot Jones- 8
Crack Rock- 9
Pyramids- 10
Lost- 9
White feat. John Mayer- 9
Monks- 9
Bad Religion- 8
Pink Matter feat. André 3000- 9
Forrest Gump- 9
End- 8
1 | Start 0:45 | 74 |
2 | Thinkin Bout You 3:20 | 92 |
3 | Fertilizer 0:39 | 80 |
4 | Sierra Leone 2:28 | 85 |
5 | Sweet Life 4:22 | 90 |
6 | Not Just Money 0:59 | 74 |
7 | Super Rich Kids 5:04 feat. Earl Sweatshirt | 92 |
8 | Pilot Jones 3:04 | 83 |
9 | Crack Rock 3:44 | 89 |
10 | Pyramids 9:52 | 97 |
11 | Lost 3:54 | 93 |
12 | White 1:16 feat. John Mayer | 81 |
13 | Monks 3:20 | 86 |
14 | Bad Religion 2:55 | 90 |
15 | Pink Matter 4:28 feat. André 3000 | 93 |
16 | Forrest Gump 3:14 | 88 |
17 | End 2:14 | 80 |
#1 | / | A.V. Club |
#1 | / | Consequence of Sound |
#1 | / | Entertainment Weekly |
#1 | / | musicOMH |
#1 | / | Paste |
#1 | / | Pazz & Jop |
#1 | / | PopMatters |
#1 | / | Slant |
#1 | / | SPIN |
#1 | / | The Guardian |