There are plenty of addicts on the back half of the album: the fiend at the center of 'Crack Rock' whose family 'stopped inviting you to things' and 'won't let you hold their infant,' or the poisoned relationship between a dealer and his mule on 'Lost'. But once again, Ocean isn't just sniping easy targets 'why see the world when you got the beach?' he asks, a Rorschach test of a hook that leaves its levels of bliss or cynicism wholly up to the listener. There are sly California class observations in the vein of Joan Didion or Randy Newman, where latchkey 'Super Rich Kids' can't see past their own one-percent 'Sweet Life'. Even though it's my voice, I'm a storyteller.' Those tales are as wide-ranging as they are engrossing, always benefitting from Ocean's eye for detail and specificity. 'I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films. 'As a lifestyle, you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy,' Ocean recently told The New York Times. While pop is currently in the golden age of exacting self-reflection- an often beguiling phenomenon spurred on by the internet's infinite mirror- Ocean is interested in a more selfless pursuit. Rather than getting listeners to comb through the lyrics for certain words or references, Ocean mixes things up so well- and coats the entire affair with heavy doses of disorienting surreality- that petty pronoun policing is rendered completely useless as deeper meanings reveal themselves at the same time. I realized they were written in a language I did not yet speak.' And, whether consciously or not, Channel Orange's languageВ is admirably- and skillfully- inclusive. the ones I played when I experienced a girlfriend for the first time. After realizing he was in love with a man, Ocean 'reminisced about the sentimental songs I enjoyed when I was a teenager. Its beautiful ambiguities had people reacting with sensational headlines, and then amending those sensational headlines, and then thinking about how and why they personally reacted to such sensational headlines. But it will not be the album's only legacy.ДЄside from its bravery, Ocean's letter was, in itself, stunningly written.

This is changing, and Frank Ocean is helping it to change, and if his revelation inspires others to understand themselves or the world more fully, then that could be one of Channel Orange's finest legacies. For a culture that accurately prides itself on sonic progression, hip-hop and R&B can be woefully conservative when it comes to sexuality. In light of the letter he published earlier this month, in which he stated that his first love, at age 19, was with a man, that line- and others on the album- gains some personal and historical context. As written, it's by-and-large a unisex composition, and the line, 'my eyes don't shed tears, but boy they pour when I'm thinkin bout you,' didn't seem especially revealing since Ocean wrote the song for a woman. TheВ 'Thinkin Bout You' mix-up was telling for another reason, too. studios gave him the experience to create a piece as accomplished and varied as Channel Orange, which swings from Stevie-style keyboard breeziness to 1990s bap&B to mystic psych rock to crunching 8-bit funk without thinking twice. And while he's now primarily writing songs for himself, his time toiling in L.A. After languishing as a behind-the-scenes writer for pop stars including Brandy, John Legend, and Justin Bieber, with 'Thinkin Bout You' Ocean doubled down on the out-of-nowhere success of his unique and brilliant 2011 mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra.,В marking his territory as a performer in his own right. The fact that Ocean's take dwarfs Kelly's both artistically as well as in terms of popularity is telling. When Ocean dropped an early take of 'Thinkin Bout You' on his Tumblr last summer, it was quickly followed by a version from perfectly competent Roc Nation signee Bridget Kelly, who claimed Ocean originally wrote the song for her.

He tells himself white lies in the verse before flipping to a falsetto that could make D'Angelo sweat for the endless wound of a chorus: 'Do you not think so far ahead?/ Cause I've been thinkin bout forever.' It's all there on proper opener 'Thinkin Bout You', where he battles his own brain while reminiscing about a first love.

On Channel Orange, this serene deadpan is splashed with crackling emotion, as though he's alternately narrating and starring in his own Magnolia-style cross-wired-heartbreak epic. Along with Ocean's empathy for his characters is a sense of repose- he's been there, he's weathered it, and he's come away with his Zen-like calm intact.

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