Channel Orange (stylized as channel ORANGE) is the debut studio album by the American R&B singer-songwriter Frank Ocean. It was released on July 10, 2012, by Def Jam Recordings. After releasing his mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra the previous year, Ocean began writing new songs with Malay, a producer and songwriter who then assisted him with recording Channel Orange at EastWest Studios in Hollywood. Rather than rely on samples as he had with his mixtape, Ocean wanted to approach sound and song structure differently on the album. Other producers who worked on the album included Om'Mas Keith and Pharrell Williams. Its recording also featured guest appearances from Odd Future rappers Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler, the Creator, vocalist/songwriter André 3000, and guitarist John Mayer.
Noted by writers as musically unconventional, Channel Orange draws on electro-funk, pop-soul, jazz-funk, and psychedelic styles, as well as nonmusical sounds such as film dialogue and ambient noise that function as interludes. Vocally, Ocean uses a free-form flow as well as alternating falsetto and tenor registers throughout the album. His songwriting explores themes of unrequited love, decadence, social class, and drugs through the use of surrealistic imagery, conversational devices, and descriptive narratives depicting dark characters. He titled the album as a reference to the neurological phenomenon grapheme–color synesthesia, through which he had perceived the color orange during the summer he first fell in love.
To prevent Channel Orange from leaking onto the Internet, Ocean and Def Jam released the album digitally one week earlier than its publicly announced date. It was promoted with five singles, including Ocean's highest-charting single "Thinkin Bout You" (number 32 on the US Billboard Hot 100) and a supporting concert tour in July 2012. Channel Orange debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 and sold 131,000 copies in its first week, eventually selling 621,000 copies in the US by September 2014. Critically, it was the best-reviewed album of 2012 and the year's top-ranked album in numerous critics' lists, including the American Pazz & Jop and the British HMV Poll of Polls. At the 2013 Grammy Awards, Channel Orange was nominated for Album of the Year and won Best Urban Contemporary Album. Since then, it has featured in several professional lists ranking the best albums from the 2010s as well as all time.
Background Frustrated with Def Jam Recordings' inactivity in his recording career, Frank Ocean released his debut mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra online for free in February 2011. It showcased the singer's original tracks, repurposed songs by other recording acts, and featured musical and lyrical elements unconventional in R&B. Although it lacked conventional promotion, the mixtape attained a following among listeners and received critical acclaim. Ocean and Def Jam eventually mended their relationship, and while a planned contracted edition of Nostalgia, Ultra never materialized, the label released two of its songs as singles, including the Billboard charting "Novacane". An agreement was then reached to release a tentative follow-up album for 2012.
Writing Ocean started writing songs for Channel Orange in February 2011 with songwriter and producer Malay, his friend and creative partner since their start in the music industry as songwriters. They originally met in Atlanta and worked for the same publishing company, through which they reconnected after Malay moved to Los Angeles. Ocean spent more time with Malay, introducing him to his Odd Future collective, while connecting creatively through their respective songwriting, which led to their partnership for Channel Orange. For the album, Ocean wrote his lyrics to complement Malay's ideas for the music. Occasionally, they wrote songs together by improvising musical ideas from Malay's keyboard and guitar playing. Channel Orange was written in two weeks, according to the singer.
Although Ocean had creative freedom for both projects, he felt more confident as a songwriter for Channel Orange and typed his lyrics on a laptop rather than composing in his head as he had done for Nostalgia, Ultra. Since transitioning from writing for other artists, he had been influenced by his "gloriously painful love life" when writing songs. For his lyrics, Ocean used both his past personal experiences and imagination to compose narratives for songs. He was inspired to write the song "Crack Rock" by stories he heard sitting in on Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous groups mentored by his grandfather, who also dealt with substance abuse in his youth. In an interview for The Guardian, Ocean expressed uncertainty about his penchant for darker subject matter, but speculated that "those were the colours I had to work with on those days. ... I mean, 'experience' is an interesting word. I just bear witness."
In June 2012, news outlets and music journalists from pre-release listening events for Channel Orange raised questions about certain songs' lyrics and Ocean's sexuality. The lyrics addressed a male object of love and deviated from the heterosexual perspective of his past songs. Scrapping his original plan of including it in the album's liner notes, Ocean published a TextEdit file as an open letter through his Tumblr blog on July 4. Originally written in December 2011, it recounted his unrequited feelings for a man when he was 19 years old, citing the experience as his first love. Ocean's disclosure was received with support from Def Jam and praise from other recording artists and cultural commentators. He also remarked on writing Channel Orange after years of emotional struggle with the experience, stating in the letter, "I wrote to keep myself busy and sane. I wanted to create worlds that were rosier than mine. I tried to channel overwhelming emotions."
During their writing sessions, Malay noticed Ocean's use of gender pronouns in his lyrics, but attributed it to Ocean's poetic license rather than his sexuality. In an interview after Ocean's open letter, Malay called him "the new hybrid of what an MC used to be in the '80s or '90s ... the true storyteller" and said of the lyrics, "I don't think anyone during any given point during the creative process knew what was happening ... when he's singing maybe from a female perspective or whatever, it's a story, it's a world that he created. It's not necessarily his personal—like something that he's experiencing. Maybe it is and it's a metaphor the way he did it". They finished writing Channel Orange in two to three months. Ocean said of the album's development in an interview for Rap-Up, "It succinctly defines me as an artist for where I am right now and that was the aim. It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story and all kinds of sonic goodness."
Recording and production
Once the songs were written, Ocean ordered them into what ultimately became the album's track listing and began recording them in that order. He recorded most of the album at EastWest Studios in Hollywood, near where he was renting a home at the time. The studio complex featured recording equipment from the 1960s. Other recording locations included Henson Recording Studios and the Record Plant in Hollywood, Westlake Recording Studios and Studio for the Talented and Gifted in Los Angeles, Manhattan Sound Recording in New York City, and San Ysidro in Beverly Hills. He originally planned to rent recording equipment and the Beverly Hills mansion alone rather than rent a studio for $1,600 a day. He had a maid at the mansion and enjoyed amenities such as a pool and a sauna, but ended up recording only three songs there—"Lost", "Pyramids", and "Analog 2", a collaboration with fellow Odd Future member Tyler, the Creator.
Ocean recorded his vocals alone for several months, striving intensively for high performance standards, before rejoining Malay for the album's production. Ocean produced most of Channel Orange and was assisted by Malay, who also played guitar, bass, keyboards, and brass instruments. He described his own contributions as "behind the scenes" to Ocean's "diligent" work ethic. Ocean wanted to experiment sonically and approach song structure differently than he had before. For inspiration, he and Malay listened to older records to either use as musical references or set a mood at the studio, listening to music by Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Sly and the Family Stone, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix. They also put up posters of Pink Floyd and Bruce Lee, and projected inaudible old movies in the studio's background.
Their production also emphasized instrumentation and was a departure for Ocean after Nostalgia, Ultras reliance on samples. In the studio, they reworked the musical ideas from their writing sessions, incorporated live production, and ornamented their songs musically. Ocean enlisted Los Angeles-based producer Om'Mas Keith to help him rework the songs. They added live drums to "Crack Rock", "Monks", and "Sweet Life", which was originally produced as a digital track. Originally written by Ocean for singer Bridget Kelly, "Thinkin Bout You" had been recorded as an early take by him and posted on his Tumblr account in July. Ocean and Malay's final mix of the song for the album added a strings intro. For "Bad Religion", engineer Jeff Ellis tried to compensate for the few string players they had by arranging seating for a large string section in EastWest's Studio 1 and using a pair of old stereo ribbon microphones to capture the sound. They sat players in different seats each time they played along with the track in order to mix all of the takes together and give the impression of a larger ensemble.
In the wake of Nostalgia, Ultra, other artists took interest in Ocean and contacted him about working together, leading to collaborations on Channel Orange. He previewed songs at different stages of completion to get feedback from guest artists, some of whom he cited as his "creative heroes", including record producer Pharrell Williams, who co-wrote and co-produced "Sweet Life" with Ocean. Ocean and Malay previewed songs to rock musician John Mayer, which inspired his guitar playing for both "Pyramids" and "White". For the latter track, they used the instrumental of the song of the same name from Odd Future's 2012 album The OF Tape Vol. 2, recorded atmospheric instrumentation by Mayer and other musicians, and tracked it to the original instrumental.
Ocean reached out to rappers André 3000 and Big Boi of hip hop duo Outkast to appear on "Pink Matter". However, André 3000 did not want to reunite with Big Boi as a duo on another artist's album. The former ended up rapping alone and playing guitar on the song. Ocean told him to tell any kind of story with his verse for "Pink Matter". As André 3000 recalled, "when I got the track, I just started writing to it and I was just, I'm just happy to be a part of that whole movement and his whole movement because he has become a whole 'nother kind of icon in today's age."
Ocean and Malay mixed Channel Orange at Studio for the Talented and Gifted, and engineer Spike Stent mixed parts of the album at The Mix Suite in Los Angeles. It was mastered by Vlado Meller at Masterdisk in New York City. Malay said that he and Ocean focused on sonic "intricacies" such as interludes and skits on tracks when mixing the album, which he referred to as their "art project". Ocean said that he admires "the anonymity that directors can have about their films" and explained his use of interludes on the album, saying that "the work is the work. The work is not me ... Even though it's my voice, I'm a storyteller."
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