Frank Ocean/Greenberger Greenberg Cebar

Going to see The Who perform "Quadrophenia".' Anyone got a

problem with that? Yeah, you. I'm talking to you. You talkin' to me?

I like "Nature Feels" and Channel Orange surely can do with some more explicit sexual content - only now with all those semi, no, bi-curious songs it would be weird to get too explicit.

And power to our host for not mentioning Ocean's coming out in the review, I can't resist though.

Oh, I've just been forced by a friend to listen to Miss Joss Stone's "volume 2" (why can't they see it's a turn-off). As someone who love her voice, I think it's funkier than volume 1 and she made some magic on "Give More Power to the People". But I still rather have the pregnant and forgiven Adele or.. Irma Thomas?

Entry #8, Track #10, “Swim Good”

My picture of 2011 finally forming under Frank Ocean, I began heavily texting my noise boys Nick and Ryan about our favorite music of the year, draining my new smartphone’s batteries while my family and I embarked on hikes, dinners, and more on the North shore of Lake Superior.  We were still all figuring out how much we liked Watch the Throne, but we all agreed on my fresh favorite, nostalgia,ULTRA.

Lying down on the beach one evening by my cabin, I was listening to the album (like I had been for the entire short vacation), and texted girl I was chasing.  I’d come back to school in just two and a half weeks, and I was growing more and more pessimistic about my outlook, judging where things might be heading from conversation and, of course, Facebook photos.  I told her what I was listening to, that I was writing a song, that I was at the beach with my dog.  After I sent it, “Swim Good” came on.  My dog tried (and not for the first time) to swim in the lake, practically whimpering and hurting itself through the water’s coldness.  I told Bjorn to get the hell out of there (he was in no real danger, but I always have to tell my silly dog to cut out the silly things he does).

I’ve hated the water for a lot of my life.  It’s not a phobia.  I just don’t like it.  I hate getting my hands wet and used to abstain from washing them on the way out of the bathroom.  I don’t really enjoy swimming, particularly in lakes, but water’s always been a helluva thing to look at.  So I kept sitting out there.

Frank Ocean’s song of broken hearts, black suits, and funerals, backed by a beat that sounds like someone rhythmically shaking a large bag of coins, finds Frank both at his darkest and his most fun.  He feels like a ghost, but then interjects “NO SWAYZE” and classically ****s a rhyme: “I’ve got this black suit on/Rolling around like I’m ready for a fyoonuh/RUHL.”

I could cite most any line in “Swim Good,” Ocean’s most densely clever song alongside “Novacane,” but what makes “Swim Good” so special is that it portrays its darkness with a lightness, and as I mentally prepared myself to get my heart seriously broken, “Swim Good” made me crack a smile.