Like his rapper comrades in the Odd Future collective, Ocean writes with a precise sense of place: His tales are laid in decadent, sun-dazzled L.A., a landscape teeming with privileged slackers (“Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends/Super rich kids with nothing but fake friends”), unemployed guys mooching off their stripper girlfriends (“Pyramids”), lovelorn sadsacks who pour out their hearts to Muslim cab drivers (“Bad Religion”). He’s also his own man, a distinctive voice with no real analogue in R&B, or anywhere else in today’s pop. In “Bad Religion,” the LP’s shuddering centerpiece, Ocean sings: “This unrequited love/To me it’s nothing but/A one-man cult/And cyanide in my styrofoam cup/I could never make him love me.” There are echoes of soul forbears in Ocean’s music – Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, Prince – but his feel for romantic tragedy, unfurling in slow-boiling ballads, links him to an older tradition. Ocean made headlines when he revealed on his Tumblr that his first love had been a man his laments for that doomed romance are all over Channel Orange, his first official album. It’s how he loves: ardently, recklessly, yet knowingly, with a young man’s headlong passion and a mordant wisdom beyond his years.

The question isn’t who Frank Ocean loves.

Pitchfork channel orange review