Our Favorite Albums #9

9. Frank Ocean – Channel Orange [2012]

Nominated by DJ Jagged Little Thrill of What the Funk & Word on the Street, DJ AmorOso of WTF: What the Funk & Storytime, and DJ Lukey G of The Guest List.

Channel Orange has an unconventional musical style, drawing on electro-funk, pop-soul, jazz-funk, psychedelic music, and nonmusical sounds such as film dialogue and ambient noise that function as interludes. Vocally, Ocean uses a free-form flow as well as alternating falsetto and tenor registers throughout the album. His songwriting explores themes of unrequited love, decadence, class, and drugs through the use of surrealistic imagery, conversational devices, and descriptive narratives depicting dark characters. He titled the album as a reference to the neurological phenomenon grapheme–color synesthesia and the color he perceived during the summer he first fell in love. (wikipedia.org)