Last night, across the pond, the New York Times reported that Frank Ocean’s next album will be released on Friday, exclusively through Apple Music (so I think we know which artist will be king of the Pirate Bay next week).
The long-awaited release titled Boys Don’t Cry is Ocean’s first album since 2012’s Grammy winning Channel Orange, so for fans of the mysterious artist this is welcome news indeed.
Frank Ocean is notoriously enigmatic, and news regarding Boys Don’t Cry has been sparse. Today fans finally get the release date they have been waiting four years for.
Since Channel Orange, the RnB star has been tough to track down. Three years ago, Ocean confirmed the name of his new record but all news since then has been rumours and conjecture.
The singer began to surface again earlier this year, appearing on Kanye West’s latest record The Life of Pablo and providing songwriting assistance on James Blake’s The Colour in Anything. Yesterday morning, Ocean released a video teaser on his website, a cryptic live stream hosted by Apple Music. The video showed footage of some work benches, with occasional background chatter.
The NY Times gained this information from “a person with knowledge of the release plans”, so readers are urged to exercise caution and take that source with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, the Times gleaned some valuable information from this industry figure – whoever he or she is.
Boys Don’t Cry will be available exclusively through Apple Music for the first two weeks following its release, and will apparently be accompanied by a major video and a printed publication. After the two week period, the album will become available through other services, thankfully.
An Apple exclusive isn’t the ideal release scenario, but at this point, any news is good news.
And hey, we’re all going to know more come Friday.
