Frank Ocean
Nostalgia, Ultra.
Release Date: Feb 18, 2011
Genre(s): Rap, R&B
Record label: Frank Ocean
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Album Review: Nostalgia, Ultra. by Frank Ocean
Great, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
Frank Ocean co-wrote songs for John Legend ("Quickly") and Brandy ("1st & Love"), signed to Def Jam, and connected with rap group Odd Future, but his career as a solo artist did not gain traction until he linked to an upload of this, his first mixtape, on his Tumblr blog in early 2011. Compared to most releases of its kind, Nostalgia, Ultra is plotted with care, not slapped together with haste. It shifts between original material -- produced by Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, MIDI Mafia, Happy Perez, and James Fauntleroy II -- and anti-pigeonhole re-voicings of songs by Coldplay, Mr.
Based on rating 7.8/10
Frank Ocean is a 23-year-old New Orleans-born, Beverly Hills-based singer who's in the gleefully hedonistic hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. Frank Ocean is also known as Christopher "Lonny" Breaux, a songwriter who has helped pen tracks for Justin Bieber, John Legend, and Brandy over the last few years. He's the latest example of why the major label system is crumbling at the knees of Twitter and Tumblr, too.
Based on rating 7/10
Drake is rumored to be putting out an R&B album sometime in the next few years. If it is anything like his last full album, Thank Me Later, that’s going to mean a whole shit load of auto tune. Like, T-Pain levels of auto tune. Though there are signs of compression on his record, Frank Ocean never gets that digital on Nostalgia, Ultra, his debut mix tape as part of the Odd Future collective.
Opinion: Excellent
Frank Ocean “Nostalgia, Ultra.” is an album of purpose with the air of an accident, a bedroom experiment that features big-name producers and interpolates MGMT and the Eagles. It’s the first album by the soul eccentric Frank Ocean, a singer and songwriter who is signed to Island Def Jam. Major labels are major labels, though, and Frank Ocean undoubtedly took note of how his comrades in the rising hip-hop collective Odd Future bypassed the system altogether in recent months.