Blond

Hard to find Frank business.

You could easily see Blonde as full of contradictions, and this would be yet another – how can such a purportedly personal album be so lacking in detail or revelation? But these mixed signals are not the result of slapdashery. What originally appear to be Blonde’s flaws – its loose ends and ambiguities – end up as its strengths. Past and present, black and white, blonde and blond: in subsuming them all, this record serves as a subtle and moving rumination on the passage of time and the blurring of identity, with its protagonist gloriously unwilling to be defined as one thing or the other. Like life itself, nothing is crystal clear – other than the fact you should never make assumptions about Frank Ocean.