12 Essential Frank Ocean Interviews

Image via Jonathan F

This Complex profile from 2011 was, for many of us, the first encounter with Frank Ocean outside of his music. He's already establishing the private, mischievous persona that would become part of his approach to the media, sharing just enough information to get us interested, but not enough to provide a clickbait title.

"I like my listeners and, I hate to use this term so early but, my fans, if I’ve got any, to discover shit on their own," Frank said. "And for the shit to be in layers. I’m not going to brag about it." The words would prove to be prophetic. 

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In his first major magazine cover, Frank Ocean gives an interview that is anything but typical. This profile follows Frank around for a couple days, and we begin to unravel who Frank Ocean is—or who he is in front of journalists. In this memorable profile, we learn about his beginnings in the music industry, his love of cars, and even his aversion to being labeled an R&B singer.

"If I said you were a dove but you were a swan," he asks, "Would that be accurate?" This piece came out just a couple months after the release of his first album Nostalgia, Ultra, and fans get to relive the moments of evolution and growth towards the artist he is today. 

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Still basking in the glow of Nostalgia, Ultra, Frank visited London for this BBC interview in 2012. It's interesting to hear him talk about the beginning of his love affair with the city—it's where he would retreat to finish Blonde a few years later. Frank is patient with his answers in this one, floating from the metaphysical ("I don't think any of us can live without affecting one another") to the candid ("The ['Swim Good'] video concept... was a great excuse to blow up a car"). Towards the end of the interview, he discusses his next project, the as-yet unreleased channel ORANGE, describing it as a series of stories that just need to be surrounded by "sonic goodies."

Frank is, as usual, maddeningly understated ("It's pretty rad to hear Beyoncé sing a song of yours"), but he remains affable and optimistic throughout the interview, even if he has been "feeling really mortal lately." It's clear he knows he has it—it's just a matter of time before the rest of us realize it.

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Frank Ocean's Times profile hit newsstands early in 2013, just days before he'd beat Chris Brown and Miguel to win a Grammy for Best R&B Album. Jeff Himmelman's piece frames Ocean's achievements and contextualizes his background, filling in the blanks for readers who weren't up to speed. (The author cites comparisons—Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Prince—that are as accurate as they are revealing, translating a wunderkind into language easily grasped by a wider readership.)

The profile had its fair share of memorable quotes: Ocean tackles the dynamics of an interview, the importance of self-branding on social media, and his earliest music memories.

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"Why don't I know much about you, Frank?" Angie Martinez asks to begin her guest's first and only interview on Hot97. It's a valid question. Of all the topics broached during this 2011 conversation between burgeoning star and legendary radio personality, an artist's livelihood ranks highest in importance.

Ocean promises he doesn't lay low to spark intrigue or curiosity, and while he admits music turned price tags into afterthoughts, he adamantly defends a famous person's right to privacy. The interview aired just over a month after the August drop date of Watch the Throne.

An ironic quote to laugh at in retrospect: "Nah, I have no idea [when Channel Orange is dropping]. I'm serious [Laughs]... I think you can keep the party going a little bit with a little—not making people wait, but just... Put it this way. I just want to make sure the next thing is right, and I don't wanna go on the record and say it's coming out on some phantom date then it never appears."

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In this raw and very candid 2016 interview, Frank Ocean discusses his disappearance and the situations and fame that brought him to that point. It's one of Jon Caramanica's best profiles—he joins Frank as he's coming out of the self-imposed exile that had started in 2013. Blonde and Endless had dropped three months prior to publication, and the piece details Ocean's struggle between introversion and superstardom. “I had, in the midst of all of this, this feeling of isolation,” he says. “Within my circle, there was a lot of places I thought I could turn that I felt like I couldn’t turn to anymore.”

Frank details his life in the past few years, the inspirations for making Blonde, and the "seven-year chess game" it took to free himself from Def Jam's contract.

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In 2011, Jeff Weiss wrote about Odd Future for the LA Times. His story birthed an abundance of leftover material, including a Frank Ocean interview the author wisely published on his own website, Passion of the Weiss. The candid talk wades through an array of topics, from the racist implications behind R&B labeling to the e-mails that turned Ocean's visions into Nostalgia, Ultra. Of the stories shared in this piece, many had been discussed by Frank previously. The details are richer here, however, and the artist's humble start transforms from excerpts or anecdotes into a clearer narrative.

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In this leaked footage, Frank Ocean is being interviewed for his Boys Don't Cry magazine promo. During the span of this video, Frank discusses the critically acclaimed Blonde, from his inspirations leading up to the album as well as the process that helped birth it. Frank goes on to distinguish that there is "no fantasy" regarding this album, reiterating Blonde is very much autobiographical in it's nature.

Elsewhere in the interview he discusses whether he'd rather fly or teleport, affirming that he'd definitely teleport though thoughtfully noting that it "just ruins the joy in flying." But what sets this clip apart is in the purposefully distorted editing.  The sound doesn't match, you can barely hear Frank's voice, but the glitchy editing and competing frames are just another example of Frank's artistry at work. He's out here redefining the interview format. 

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Taking care to ensure Frank Ocean's 2012 GQ profile stood out, writer Amy Wallace brought readers where they had never ventured before: a studio session with Pharrell, who jokingly calls Frank a different name–James Taylor—to honor his songwriting chops. A new Rolex adorns his wrist, wordlessly acknowledging the year Ocean transitioned from crowned newcomer to young star. Wallace temporarily abandons the profile format in favor of a far-reaching Q&A, exploring Frank's inspirations and detailing his relationship with his father. All this to say, Ocean's GQ spread is as bright and informative as any.

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Wax Poetics, a stateside quarterly first published in 2001, has long prided itself for the caliber of acts who grace its magazine, and its Q&A with Ocean is among the very best. Published in 2012, Matthew Trammell goes deep on topics like New Orleans, Frank's early career as a songwriter, and his memories of Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP.

Throughout, Frank's passion shines through. Take this, for example, on the process behind Nostalgia, Ultra: "The studio I was at didn’t have the vocal chain that I wanted, so I was renting shit just to give it a sound. I wanted it to sound like the shit in stores; I didn’t want it to sound like a mixtape. It wasn’t a mixtape<> to me; it was an album just as much as any other release was—it just wasn’t in the major-label system. So I treated it like that, I A&R’d it like that, I recorded it and mixed it like that.​"

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From close encounters with the late legend Prince to his favorite color (spoiler: astral blue), Frank Ocean dropped an abundance of new knowledge during his BBC Radio 1 interview with Zane Lowe. The cheerful sit-down—his first aired interview in the United Kingdom—touches plenty of topics. The two talk Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Frank's Grammy performance, and his definition of "chilling" when not recording.

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