Your Frank Ocean fix is here.
As fans patiently await new material from the reclusive artist, a recently surfaced video provides a brief glimpse into his pre-stardom days. A clip shared by YouTube user Daymond Burditt shows a young Ocean singing at his 2005 high school graduation in New Orleans. The video begins with a fellow graduate introducing Ocean—born Christopher Breaux—before he takes the mic and leads his class and the audience in the John Ehret High School Alma Mater.
You can check out the performance above.
During a 2019 interview with W magazine, Ocean opened up about his experience growing up in New Orleans and how his music aspirations motivated him to do better in school.
“I didn’t have a deep affection for authority,” he explained. “I was expelled and suspended it felt like every five minutes, every school year until I became obsessed with figuring out how to make a career in music. And that interest fostered a different mentality. I think it was also around the transition to becoming a teenager, and I got really calm. My mom comments on that fairly often. I feel like I still had a lot of inner chaos, but I didn’t express it the same way. So that probably was noticeable.”
Ocean has not shared a full-length project since 2016’s Blonde. A day before the release, Ocean gifted fans with Endless—a visual album that was proceeded by a video stream of Ocean building a staircase. Though it’s unclear where the artist learned his woodworking skills, Complex previously confirmed John Ehret High School offered multiple wood shop classes, including Advanced Wood Technology and Basic Wood Technology.
