Today is the 10th anniversary of Frank Ocean’s breakthrough album, Channel Orange. What better time than now for Ocean to return from his reclusive state with new episodes of his Blonded Radio on Apple Music 1.
Streaming now and on demand, Blonded Radio came back at 4:30pm PT on Sunday night July 10th. While this isn’t the announcement of a new Frank Ocean album that everyone has been hoping for, it certainly indicates that Ocean is back on a creative tip again. Blonded has been the grounds for Ocean to drop one-off new material and experiment while he pushes towards the long-anticipated follow-up to Blonde, which came out in 2016. The last episode of Blonded Radio came out on Christmas 2021.
A release from Apple was sparse, but was very clear in saying that “New episodes of Frank Ocean’s blonded RADIO arrive today at 4:30pm PT, only on Apple Music.” The fact that Apple Music is referring to “episodeS,” in the plural sense, indicate that there is more to come here after Sunday night’s comeback pair.
The first 35 minutes of the first episode, “blonded LSD,” was an “original score” by Ocean set to a conversation about micro-dosing and psychedelics with Dr. James Fadiman. The second episode, “blonded ENERGY” began shortly thereafter with a different score by Ocean, set to a conversation with Qigong teacher, Mingtong Gu.
People were thoroughly confused on social media when the first episode dropped. “Listening to new blonded radio and it’s just a speech about doing drugs over a dance beat. Im here for the Frank Ocean psychedelic arc,” one user said.
https://twitter.com/nfr_podcast/status/1546282793482739713?s=20&t=jdsPecPMCp88D_o5PN5HqA
listening to new blonded radio and it’s just a speech about doing drugs over a dance beat. Im here for the Frank Ocean psychedelic arc.
— mark (@mrkrnkn) July 10, 2022
Nobody said this was going to be a straightforward comeback, but are you surprised?
Listen to it now at Apple Music 1 here.