Hip-Hop is sort of a wasteland lately.
Lil Wayne whines and chirps over here, Waka Flocka jumps and hollers over there. Frank Ocean’s newest, “channel ORANGE” shows some originality in the rap game.
“channel ORANGE” pays homage to Ocean’s R&B influences. This is smooth and easy, evening driving music, not your raging house party or fist-pumper bar anthems. Stoners rejoice, this is ambient and calm, then catchy, poppy and fun.
Fellow Odd Future cohort Earl Sweatshirt joins Ocean on “Super Rich Kids,” a slow jam about upper-class teens and young adults with too much time on their hands and not enough responsibility, a demographic that is slowly becoming a bigger consumer of pop-rap than the thugs in the hood. “Super Rich Kids” offers some satire on the pill-popping, fancy car joyriding, suburb resident.
The social commentary continues with “Crack Rock,” a showcase of the depraved and depressing, with a solid narrative and all too real examples of the dangers of crack. While not being an unfamiliar topic for the rap fan, a good hip-hop album usually has a pretty good song about crack. Only to be followed up by near 10-minute techno-laden “Pyramid,” a super chiller late-night  jam.
There’s a nice instrumental titled “White,” with John Mayer on guitar. Although his presence on the album is a tad unexpected, “White” is very catchy. Andre 3000 of Outkast joins Ocean for “Pink Matter,” a delicious funk-laden and soulful ballad.
All too often, newer artists have a bad habit of doing half of their album “featuring” other artists. You can easily end up paying more attention to the who in a song than the what. Ocean keeps it mellow, featuring a couple of other rappers and John Mayer, nothing that is going to distract from his style and originality.
This is respectable, this is calculated and direct. Ocean takes his individuality and displays it like a professional. Ocean recently publicly announced that he is gay, and the all too often homophobic rap community has embraced him. Not bad timing to release a unique, soulful and musically diverse album.
Aside from some lyrics that actually reflect some substance inside Ocean’s brain, these beats are really good, incorporationg some very nice synthesized loops with cool keyboards and drum tracks. This isn’t your shock value and in-your-face rap production. I feel a little bad calling this a rap album. The words “rap album” seem like they might generate a sense of gaudy chains and cars with big chrome rims. This isn’t that kind of rap. A little more heart and soul is hanging around here.
If you’re feeling dissatisfied with the rap flow lately, if you’re craving something relaxing and soulful, I’d give “channel ORANGE” a try.