Talking 'Bout a Real Love: Frank Ocean's channel ORANGE [10 Years Later]

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Honestly, the fact that you’re reading this review now is a big deal to me. I *very* rarely mention anniversaries of albums that I love, but this is simply different. To go even further, hearing channel ORANGE for the first time as a kid was transformative. I saw this little orange CD on the new release stand at the local library and decided to pick it up. Again, I was literally 10 when this came out, so I had no idea what the intricacies of love and romance even were at that point, but putting that little disc inside my shitty portable CD player was certainly something. I literally didn’t know that a song could as perfect as “Pyramids” was and still is. Let me just be honest with something: This is my favorite album of all time. I gave it a relisten last night/this morning just to see if it’s in the running, and it easily took the cake. The only thing that bothers me about the digital version is that the final track doesn’t include the hidden track, “Golden Girl” with Tyler, the Creator.

People have those albums that introduced them to different genres, no matter how old or young you are. Even if they’re not the best albums you’ve heard in the genre, they could hold a special place in your heart. Watch the Throne introduced me to rap as a whole. Oneohtrix Point Never’s Replica was my gateway drug to vaporwave, ambient, and electronic music in general. Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen got me into singer-songwriter music. More recently, clipping.’s one-two punch of There Existed an Addiction to Blood and Visions of Bodies Being Burned got me into much more experimental rap. Hell, Lingua Ignota’s CALIGULA is the reason you’re reading this text on this website right now. I may have the nostalgia glasses on for this, but channel ORANGE was the start of everything, though. Alongside figuring out who I was as a person later in my life, this was the album that made a little kid go “Wow, this music thing’s pretty cool.”


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channel ORANGE is a Def Jam release.

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