Frank Ocean - Channel Orange

Clash Music“The spirit of Marvin Gaye...” Frank Ocean belongs to a tiny sub-genre of artists who possess the ability to sing in falsetto about a girl smoking crack and still sound like a fucking angel...

Drowned In Sound“A beautiful coming of age story...” Beyond genre lines, racial lines, sexuality lines, any lines you can think of, it's that all-too-rare gem: a universal story you'll come back to long after the hype's been and gone...

MusicOMH“Essentially, Channel Orange is an album about love...” When Pyramids is dubbed the 'Paranoid Android of R&B', it's without a grain of irony or inflation – it genuinely is that good...

The Arts Desk“An inventive but relatively understated take on contemporary R&B...” There's something about Frank Ocean that sets him apart from other male R&B singers. It's not the letter he wrote on his personal blog last week revealing that his first love was a man. It's his songwriting...

The Line of Best Fit“The kind of credibility that only comes from bitter experience...” Every song breathes like an individual fragment of Ocean’s personality and past, coaxed and caressed into life by his stunning voice and considered songwriting...

The Independent“"Quiet storm" slow jams laid over lo-fi, broken-speaker beats...” "I wanted", Ocean wrote, "to create worlds that were rosier than mine. I tried to channel overwhelming emotions." Mission accomplished, and then some...

BBC“A meditative voyage through Ocean’s innermost thoughts...” Channel ORANGE is a direct reflection of its maker. There are moments of assured clarity, juxtaposed with flashes of childlike shyness. What remains is a solid collection of pop-soul renderings through which Ocean tries to find himself...

The Telegraph“As dazzling as it is baffling...” He is an ultra-smooth outlier possessed of a languid, seductive voice, bending soul, jazz, electro and contemporary R’n’B grooves into psychedelic shapes...

Pitchfork“Ocean is interested in a more selfless pursuit...” He's come away with his Zen-like calm intact. On Channel Orange, this serene deadpan is splashed with crackling emotion, as though he's alternately narrating and starring in his own Magnolia-style cross-wired-heartbreak epic...

Guardian“A wildly original talent...” The whys and wherefores of Frank Ocean's sexuality seem completely irrelevant. Which is, of course, just as it should be...