Frank Ocean Speaks On Coming Out

Frank Ocean’s announcement of falling in love with another man has had everyone talking. We’ve seen both supportive and toxic reactions, and his coming out brings up an issue that still hasn’t been completely resolved, especially within the hip-hop community. At the center of it all, Frank Ocean has remained pretty calm and quiet about it all, sometimes casually alluding to what he’s going through with tweets like, “im not a victim. im grown. life’s way harder for a lot of people. i still love everyone of ya’ll. no condescension.”

He’s also shared some of the hateful comments he’s received, but he hasn’t spoken out much about his personal feelings about the whole thing. In an interview with the Guardian that will run on Saturday, Frank opened up about it all. Here are some of the things he had to say:

“[It was] about my own sanity and my ability to feel like I’m living a life where … I’m happy when I wake up in the morning, and not with this freakin’ boulder on my chest.”

“I wished at 13 there was somebody I looked up to who would have said something like that, who would have been transparent in that way.”

“I knew that I was writing in a way that people would ask questions. I knew that my star was rising, and I knew that if I waited I would always have somebody that I respected be able to encourage me to wait longer, to not say it till who knows when.”

“People are just afraid of things too much… Sure, evil exists, extremism exists. Somebody could commit a hate crime and hurt me. But they could do the same just because I’m black. They could do the same just because I’m American.”

THE IMPORTANCE OF FRANK OCEAN’S COMING OUT LETTER