Frank Ocean reviews Kim Burrell’s “Home”
Tumblr: @frankocean.
In a Tumblr post, Frank Ocean shared a clip of gospel singer Kim Burrell singing a rendition of her 1997 song “Home” with a note about his family’s religious upbringing, including his grandmother’s religious household, how he was raised by his mother, and moving from his mom’s Baptist church to a Catholic parish at age 13, while living in New Orleans, Louisiana. Although he never performed in a church band or choir, Ocean looks up to Burrell and considers her to be at the top of her class. He wrote on Tumblr:
I was raised Christian. Only had a few friends from different religions growing up. These days, I’ve got family from agnostic to Islam. My grandmother was Pentecostal Evangelical. She brought much of that fire and brimstone back to her household. My uncle Tony said the other kids teased him and his siblings; called them “holy rollers.” So, as you may or may not expect, my mother [Katonya Breaux] was and still is less than imposing when it comes to a particular system of belief. I was a practicing Catholic for a short time. Me and moms started going to separate churches when I was like 13. I never sang or played in the church though, unfortunately. I remember being kind of intimidated by the idea of it actually. Church was the hood Julliard [arts school] to me. All the coldest musicians came out of there. The lady in the video [Kim Burrell]… summa cum laude [“with highest honor,” top class].
Update 2016-08-20:
Kim Burrell is featured on Ocean’s 2016 studio album Blonde, performing vocals in the penultimate track, “Godspeed.”
Ocean also listed Burrell’s “Home” in a list of his favorite songs inside his album-companion magazine, Boys Don’t Cry.
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