I'll admit that I haven't exactly been what you could call the most patient over the years, waiting for new music from Frank Ocean to drop. However, finding out that Endless was reportedly 140 hours with no edits is really putting things in perspective fas to why everything takes so long with him. It's hard to even remember that sensation, after the embarrassment of riches that was the release of Endless, swiftly followed by Ocean's sophomore studio album Blonde. But we were all pretty heated there for a second.
It was just because we were such big fans. And yet waiting four years after the release of channel ORANGE, only to have the dates continually pushed back on what was then called Boys Don't Cry , was almost more than we could take. But, now, seeing the scale of the project that Ocean took on with Endless alone, everything starts to make sense. In an interview with Pitchfork, visual artist Tom Sachs, who collaborated with Ocean for Endless, said the real challenge for Ocean is paring things down.
I know there was a huge wait on this for all this to come out. I think it’s testament to the reality that things made by hand take time. We’re living in an age of non-handmade things. The iPhone is the best-made thing there is, but there’s no evidence of a human being involved with it. Frank’s music, which is very personal and literally has his voice, in the same way that all musicians have their voice, it simply takes time. And when you see the video, you see him building a stairway to heaven in real time. The 40-minute version is edited, but there’s something like a 140-hour version. That’s the whole thing. That exists, that’s the art piece.
This is a man whose brain just works on a different level than the rest of ours. He isn't just stuck at his desk, trying to come up with a melody or a lyric that triggers everything else in his brain, or sitting on a full album just to draw out the anticipation. Nope, he has thoughts and ideas flowing out of his brain at a rate so high that the real challenge is paring it down. It might sound like a pretty nice problem to have, until you imagine editing 140 hours of material down to 40 minutes. I wouldn't even know where to begin with that, and it would probably take about four years. When you think of it that way, Frank Ocean is technically ahead of time, considering that he also dropped Blonde in the same weekend.
At the end of the day, 140 hours is probably longer than some artists spend making their album, and, in this case, it's the amount of footage Ocean racked up for a teaser. Not even the real album, guys. It's all making sense now. I'm really glad Sachs spoke up, so I could finally get some clarification on what exactly was taking that long. The man is a creativity machine, and it seems like sometimes it's all he can do to keep up with his own output.
Image: Giphy
