Frank Ocean - Blonde
Critic Score
Based on 42 reviews
2016 Ratings: #14 / 1004
Year End Rank: #3
User Score
2016 Rank: #3All Time: #95
Liked by 3,380 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Entertainment Weekly
With these 17 tracks, Ocean shows himself to be one of pop’s foremost innovators.
100
The Guardian
Realign your expectations, and what gradually emerges is a record of enigmatic beauty, intoxicating depth and intense emotion.
100
The Skinny
It's a dignified, down-tempo celebration of taking all the damn time you need to get something done that's worth doing right.
100
Consequence of Sound

Blonde is R&B minimalism that only Ocean could have made, and he created it as such so that its details emerge when they feel comfortable to do so — namely when the listener is prepared to face their similarities to his autobiographical faults with the same lack of a need for exoneration.

95
Earmilk

After hearing blond - you gotta respect the craftsmanship.

93
Paste

Beautifully more simple than any of our mythmaking delusions, Blonde is Ocean’s life as he experiences it: fluid and fluctuating, one man in motion. This is what freedom sounds like.

91
Pretty Much Amazing

On the whole, Blonde is more assured and consistent than Channel Orange. It inherits the bagginess of his overstuffed debut, but lacks the thrill of groundbreaking novelty. Frank Ocean is an outlier, an artist who can produce an album this phenomenal and nevertheless fall a bit short.

90
Drowned in Sound

Blonde feels like a confessional, one of naked pain, powerful acceptance and so much knowing ambiguity that the man behind these often pitch-shifted words once again keeps those rapt at arm’s length even when finally delivering. 

90
God Is in the TV
It confirms once more just how essential Ocean is as an artist, not just as a singer-songwriter. It seems likely that this album will feature highly on End of Year polls, and that is utterly deserved.
90
Clash
More quintessential than any of his previous releases, ‘Blonde’ rewards repeated listens. It demands your attention, but more importantly, it deserves it too. This is the sound of an artist in complete control, full of confidence and dazzling flair.
90
GIGsoup
'Blonde' isn’t an album that can be concisely written about; these are rich, multifaceted songs that know when to keep the listener at arm’s length, and when to pull them in close.
90
Exclaim!

Blonde is chaotic. Vibrant, it colours outside the lines. Poignant, it's transparent with altering modes of bravado, vulnerability and desperation. It is, thoroughly, a Frank Ocean album, yearning for perfection, sating the audience's hunger for dynamism, yet with the persistent feeling that the artist feels it's all a failure.

90
The Line of Best Fit

For an album that is at times intentionally difficult to follow - for all its vague and indistinct meanderings between subjects, between minds and bodies, between place and time, Blonde remains a highly accessible album - and not just sonically.

90
Spectrum Culture

The multiplicity of spins and perspectives Ocean draws out of love stories, social commentary and self-reflection is payoff enough to return to the album again and again.

90
The Young Folks

Blonde is a success not only because, technically speaking, it’s a outstanding sophomoric effort, but also because it’s pure artistry with soul and life injected into it to make it something each listener can engage with and relate to.

90
musicOMH

It’s just about impossible to live up to the hype that an album like this has been subjected to, but Ocean comes pretty close. Blonde is often a bit of a sprawling mess, but with some patience it becomes one of the most rewarding albums you’ll hear all year.

90
Pitchfork
Frank is 28 now, and his voice has grown stronger and more dexterous, while some of his tales have become more abstract.
85
Under the Radar

If casual fans looking for simpler, catchier grooves to vibe to don't get it, then so be it. Judging by the way that Ocean sings without abandon on Blonde, he's well aware of what his true fans need.

83
A.V. Club
For the most part, the musicality—much sparser than the maximalist sonic feasts of his earlier work—still holds the same synesthetic power of the past, even for those who don’t claim to have the ability to see sounds.
80
Dork

No gimmicks, no massive production. Just beautiful songs with depth, feeling and passion.

80
The Observer

There is still the powerful sense of a veiled introvert, and of the unlikely intimacy he achieves within this pose. You find yourself caring anew about the “I” of these songs, who is reflected in snatches of impressionistic poetry, in sunlight, summer smoke and boxer shorts.

80
The Needle Drop

Frank Ocean doesn't disappoint on this highly-anticipated followup to his breakout album Channel Orange.

80
The Telegraph

In its defiant strangeness, Blonde should be celebrated as part of a generational shift away from the obvious in pop, as a new mood of serious artistic daring permeates an increasingly soul-searching hip-hop culture.

80
The Sydney Morning Herald

Vulnerabilities are present, intra-relationship conversations are not left to easy cliches, Ocean feels never less than real.

80
Q Magazine

These records might not eclipse Channel Orange, but they have their own mercurial gleam, mapping the spaces between people, reaching for a hazy intimacy that almost feels real.

80
Evening Standard
It may lack a certain focus and go on a little, but there are gorgeous depths if you care to delve.
80
Crack Magazine

With 44 credited contributors, some of them literal and some very much spiritual, over 17 songs ... the only thought given to consistency is that consistency has no place in reality or the narrative arc of this album.

80
NOW Magazine

Blonde delves even further into Ocean’s creeping sense of mortality than Endless, but with the kind of focused songwriting and production values befitting the intense level of fan expectation that preceded its release.

80
Mojo

It’s a beguiling, meandering sprawl that rewards total immersion.

80
Uncut
The sprawling haziness still lingers, but the songs are sharper and studded with guests.
80
Slant Magazine
While Ocean's previous album was about currency of the monetary and interpersonal sort ... this one digs inward to examine issues of identity and personality in the shadow of growing recognition.
80
Rolling Stone
The album is by turns oblique, smolderingly direct, forlorn, funny, dissonant and gorgeous: a vertiginous marvel of digital-age psychedelic pop.
80
XXL
Luckily for Frank and his army of die-hard fans, the time he took to craft the album sufficiently equates to its’ quality.
80
American Songwriter

This is music that fascinates on first listen but requires multiple spins for its complexities and idiosyncrasies to take hold.

80
DIY
Searching for ‘Blonde’’s true meaning is like fishing for treasure in the Great Barrier Reef. There’s bound to be something down there somewhere, but you’ve got to get past the infinite, beautiful distractions.
80
No Ripcord

There’s a reason why this could be considered his attempt at writing an album akin to Sgt. Pepper: as Ocean consciously sets a very clear tone with some intrepid experimentation, he finds to way to put the focus almost entirely on thought-provoking sentiments.

80
SPIN

The first half of Blonde is astonishing, sustained beauty. The second is more distant, closer to the shower improvs of Friday’s sounds-like-a-soundtrack-and-it-is Endless.

80
PopMatters
Like the greatest artists, Frank Ocean makes the new and experimental appealing towards even the most mainstream audiences, except this time the songs are more fulfilling and memorable than ever before.
80
Tiny Mix Tapes

Blonde is of instances, of stretches and yawns, creativity in recreation, invisible labor, a time-lapse collapsed into one space.

70
AllMusic

An undoubtedly reactive work, this is undiluted and progressive nonetheless.

68
HipHopDX

Frank is rarely completely straightforward on Blonde, but many of the best moments come when he gets closer to it.

40
The Independent

Less structured and song-oriented than Channel Orange, it’s a long, meandering ramble through Ocean’s passing interests and attitudes, hopes and memories ... delivered in an undulating sprechstimme that seems to be avoiding the difficult choice of a compelling melody.

morningsbell
0

i hate this album its the reason why i sob alone at 3 am

BradTasteMusic
88

It's ya boi, unpopular opinion here. This album, to me, is really really boring. I don't know the appeal of it but whatever. I tried but couldn't get into it. It's too skeletal for me

Edit (52 -> 90): I didn't think I would get much more out of this, especially due to how dull I still think Nikes is. Blonde is brilliant poetry, and mind blowing but subtle production. Jarring emotions, and no happy ending. In other words, it is beautiful art, and I am proud to finally appreciate it.

Cambridge
100

"Blond Is"

Poetic to exhaustion.
Rebelliously virtuous.
Progressive but not obnoxiously ambitious.
Naked with a warm tone of soulfulness.
Euphorically sinister of nostalgia.
Tastefully sour like an onion.
The Sistine Chapel of R&B.

UhmJustEric
90

An emotional ride all the way till the end. Definitely impacted me in many ways and will keep being in my rotation for who knows how long.

NR

OH MY GOD IM CREAMING

yeah pretty sweet is low-key a skip tho

HAMPSTERWHEELS
100

This album is an absolute beacon of modern rnb music. It heralds such a fresh sound palette, complimented by Frank Ocean’s heavenly vocals and his pure poetry that he lays on the tracks.

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Track List

1Nikes
5:14
88
2Ivy
4:09
94
3Pink + White
3:04
95
4Be Yourself
1:26
81
5Solo
4:17
92
6Skyline To
3:04
88
7Self Control
4:09
95
8Good Guy
1:06
82
9Nights
5:07
97
10Solo (Reprise)
1:18
89
11Pretty Sweet
2:38
87
12Facebook Story
1:08
76
13Close to You
1:25
84
14White Ferrari
4:08
95
15Seigfried
5:34
93
16Godspeed
2:57
92
17Futura Free
9:24
87
Total Length: 1 hour
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Added on: August 1, 2016