The elusive Frank Ocean recently shared a minute-long snippet of a new song on social media, posting the preview on his Instagram stories which has been reposted to X. This is the first hint at new music since the singles “Dear April” and “Cayendo” from 2020, and the first possibility of a new album since Blonde from 2016.
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Most recently, Ocean performed for the first time since 2017, at Coachella this year to a lackluster reception. He arrived an hour later than scheduled and stayed mostly near the back of the stage, then ended the set early due to local restrictions. The performance was not live-streamed on YouTube, but fans pieced together a rough cut of the set and posted it online, where it was subsequently taken down. He then canceled his second Coachella appearance.
Ocean has had a rough go of it recently, though, and some fans gave him grace for what he’s been through; in 2020 his younger brother was killed in a car accident at 18, and Ocean is most likely still grappling with grief. So, there’s a potential reason why his return to live performing at Coachella didn’t go as planned. As author Akilah Hughes posited in a review of the performance, it’s possible that he appeared at Coachella out of contractual obligation, and the hiccups along the way were deliberate sabotages of a performance he wasn’t in the right headspace to give.
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Though, with this new snippet, there’s hope that Ocean is coming out on the other side of his grief, or at least possibly channeling it into music. It’s good news for fans, either way, as they’ve been waiting for a sign that Ocean has been in the studio for years now.
Ocean’s work hasn’t been on the back burner completely these few years, though. In 2021, he revealed the fashion project Homer, a jewelry collaboration with Prada. On his Instagram stories at the time he wrote, “This project has kept my mind moving and my imagination turning throughout it all … My hope is to make things that last, that are hard to destroy, see it in stone.”
2022 brought news that Ocean was in talks to direct his first feature-length film with A24, and he also released the Apple Music 1 broadcast Homer Radio, a companion to his Beats 1 broadcast Blonded Radio.
Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage
