People holding their breath for Frank Ocean‘s Boys Don’t Cry album finally got some answers. Ocean’s producer Malay revealed why the album is not here yet in a Reddit AMA session.
Malay produced Frank Ocean‘s 2012 breakthrough album Channel Orange and he’s just about the only person other than Frank himself that would have any idea on the current status of Boys Don’t Cry. Sensing that he was going to be bombarded with questions about the album in his Reddit AMA, he sent out a disclaimer saying that he was not going to answer any questions about the album.
But, you got to shoot your shot still. One fan hit Malay with a passionate Jedi mind trick and asked around the question by asking what the producer thought about fans’ frustration with the rollout of the project.
The fan named “arrogantdesperado” wrote:
Hey Malay, Your production on cO is f*cking amazing, and I respect that you don’t want us to ask about BDC and when it’s going to come out. So in the interest of asking a question that acknowledges those boundaries while still addressing the elephant in the room, I’d like to know what you think about how fans have interacted with the rollout to this point.
I think the major pain point for fans has been the fact that Frank has led us to believe there’s something coming, and then he hasn’t communicated with us at all. As someone who has believed in Frank and the communication he HAS given us throughout the process, who checked boysdontcry.co all day on July 31st because of the library card, who watched the first 2 hours of the looped stream on the morning of August 1st expecting something to happen , who left the stream on his TV all night on August 5th after the (honestly really awesome) suspense the stream built on August 4th, I feel like I’ve put some amount of trust in Frank and gotten really excited about the rollout he’s chosen to give us, but I believe that’s been betrayed to an extent.
Maybe the point of the stream is to communicate that that relationship is one that puts undue expectations on an artist to engage with strangers, but I just want to support Frank and his career, and as a fan it’s difficult to continue engaging in that kind of relationship when it feels so one-sided and unrewarding. While this doesn’t mean I’ll ever avoid his music, it puts a strain on the relationship between Frank and his fan base that I find both easily avoidable and undesirable.
Do you personally understand where I (and other fans with similar perspectives) am coming from on this? What do you think of the way we feel about this issue? Do you think we do demand too much of performers like Frank, or that we take it too seriously? If we’re interacting with Frank in the wrong way, what would be a better way?
Photo: WENN.com
