Blonde Turns 10

It was all so slippery. The way it went down; the way it sounded, too. Just when you thought you had a grip on Frank Ocean, he slid through your fingers and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of smoke and streaks of light. Elusiveness is his nature, his essence, and yet so is profound emotional resonance. It’s what made Blonde so alluring back then, and why an album defined by impermanence has so powerfully endured.When Ocean released Blonde 10 years ago today, he ended a four-year wait for the official follow-up to Channel Orange, the debut album that completed his rise from blog-world sensation to Grammy-nominated superstar. He also completed a bait-and-switch that excluded Def Jam and Universal Music Group from a stake in that landmark LP, keeping his label in the dark about Blonde and instead fulfilling his contract with Endless, an oblique visual album playable only as a 45-minute video on Apple Music. It was not available for purchase.The Blonde switcheroo was an incredible coup for Ocean. He reportedly increased his potential profits from 14% to 70% by releasing it through his own label Boys Don’t Cry, which for the longest time was supposed to be the album title t...