Frank Ocean is the hinge artist of our time, the true voice of a generation because he takes long silences. With Blonde and its attendant works, his Boys Don’t Cry zine and Endless, he took his time building his staircase to somewhere. Elusive and independent, he weaves from genre to genre, sometimes shifting gears to obliterate category altogether, as he cruises past the conventions the culture still fears to let go. On Blonde, the languid guitar of surf rock coexists with soft doo-wop melodies; Frank the rapper—who is heady and occasionally, knowingly vulgar—coincides with Frank the singer, who is plaintive and longing. Sometimes, he just talks rhythmically, like in “Nights.” “Futura Free,” the triptych anchor of Blonde, moves from midtempo to atmospheric synth to a clanging guitar solo. The impressionistic lyrics mirror the feeling of wanting to disappear, for a spell: “Breathe till I evaporated/My whole body see through.”

The year 2016 crystallized the political disaster right under the surface. People theorized that we needed anthems to get us through the dark night. Big choruses, hooks as wide as highway signs, regular percussion that could gird us from chaos. But our mood was languorous; jingoism was the problem in the first place. We wanted the blurred, the softened, the existential. “Inhale, in hell, there’s heaven,” Ocean sings on “Solo,” capturing the whiplash experience of being young in this country in one line. Blonde is one synonym for American. –Doreen St. Félix / Pitchfork.com