‘Rolling Stone’ ranks ‘Blonde’ #79 all-time greatest album, ‘Channel Orange’ #148
The classics are still the classics, but the canon keeps getting bigger and better. —Rolling Stone.
Rolling Stone has updated their “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list, and two of Frank Ocean’s records have debuted among the best of the best.
The “RS 500” dates back to 2003, with the last update coming in May 2012, before Ocean had a studio album under his belt. In its 2020 revision, the entertainment magazine places his 2016 album Blonde in the top 100 and his 2012 album Channel Orange in the top 200.
Rolling Stone wrote the following about album #79, Blonde:
Frank Ocean turned the release of Blonde into a daring aesthetic stunt in itself. After years of high expectations after Channel Orange, he fulfilled his Def Jam contract with the visual project Endless, but then—within hours—he released his own Blonde. It’s a boldly personal statement full of layered harmonies, as Ocean mutates his voice to match every mood. The songs were so nakedly intimate, it felt like a post-hip-hop Pet Sounds in the spirit of Beyoncé (who sings on “Pink + White”) and Elliott Smith (whose voice appears on “Seigfried”). “Ivy” is his most deeply melancholic confession—Ocean mourns a lost love over a distorted guitar, lamenting, “We’ll never be those kids again.”
Rolling Stone had this to say about album #148, Channel Orange:
On Channel Orange, Frank Ocean became one of music’s most elusive superstars—shy about speaking in public, impossible to pin down musically. He emerged from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, writing pop tunes for the likes of Brandy and Justin Bieber. But he stepped into his own avant-soul territory with Channel Orange, his official debut. Soon after coming out of the closet—still a rarity in R&B at the time—Ocean had a hit with the falsetto slow jam “Thinkin Bout You.” He mixes up genres and vocal personae, with guest shots from André 3000 to John Mayer. The peak: the spacey 10-minute suite “Pyramids,” an Egyptian fantasy starring Cleopatra as an around-the-way girl. Years later, Channel Orange still sounds like the future.
Blonde is one of the highest rated albums released in the last decade, only behind #32: Beyoncé’s Lemonade (2016), #19: Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), and #17: Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010). See the full list at RollingStone.com.
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