my thoughts on obscure fanbase drama and how to feel when your favorite artist could be a scammer

        Frank Ocean has been my favorite artist for over half my life. I grew up on channel ORANGE playing in the car on trips to H Mart or filling basement air with ambience when I played Legos while my mom worked, inspired by the album’s twists and turns over organic chords. I endured my first rejection as a moody teen to Blonde’s gentle atmosphere of affection. I cried on sleepless nights to the oasis of warmth in an abyss that is the album Endless, painstakingly downloaded onto Spotify from YouTube rips the night I heard “Wither” for the first time. 

My hero Frank, who is notorious for staying off the radar despite his fame and hasn’t released new music in two years, suddenly came out with a statement this week to announce his new luxury jewelry brand, Homer—a collection “no less expensive than Cartier” with pieces ranging from $395 to $1.9 million. In an interview with the Financial Times, he talked about the origins behind the brand: his wish to create physical objects imbued with personal meaning, to pass on to his family. 

The reddit, facebook, and instagram feeds of Frank Ocean fanbases I spend too much time on blew up after this interview, enraged about how fake the brand was and how it only appealed to the rich. The reason they were horrified was because Frank’s track record with selling products has been awful. Forget the fact that Blonde and Endless vinyls are selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay due to their low supply: Frank’s very own “Blonded” merchandise, released and sold out 2 full years ago, has literally not been shipped to expectant fans. People have taken to calling Frank a scammer who used the stolen money from merch to fund Homer. In my opinion, these allegations aren’t very valid: refunds are still coming in, the team in charge of blonded.co shipping is definitely not personally overseen by Frank, and the jewelry project that probably cost a lot more than just the proceeds from a limited line of blonded merch was started 3 years ago from scratch, before blonded. Frank probably doesn’t even know about the merch, given his lack of communication with the outside world— and even if he knew, there might be external factors like mismanagement or covid that have prevented a solution thus far. Some arguments border on conspiracy theory: using Frank’s finesse of his Def Jam contract as evidence that he doesn’t care, or further backing arguments with cross applications of dropped lawsuits (Chipotle, Om’Mas Keith) in which Frank was clearly right. Even worse, Frank’s estranged father’s lawsuit calling him a “scammer” and “fraud” was brought up as further ammunition—not mentioning the fact that the lawsuit, literally won by Frank, was a libel case about Frank calling his father (by the way, the same guy who called Tyler, the Creator a “devil worshiper”) out for being homophobic when he was a kid. 

My opinion is that even if the argument that Frank knows about what is happening with the merch isn’t just speculation, Frank’s mistake in that regard has no connection with Homer. I agree that Frank deserves to take responsibility for getting his merchandise to his fan base regardless of the reason why he isn’t right now—that’s why at first, I too felt swindled by the same guy who said “I should be payin' y'all, honest to God” in reference to fans on “Futura Free” funding a luxury project unrelated to his previous work. However, most of the rage about Homer itself and its inaccessibility is just projection. On the surface, it seems that this is a much easier position to stand on than those who are calling Frank out for “showing his true scammer colors.” Of course I’m defending the guy I idolize. But coming to this conclusion that Frank is merely a human being who moved onto a new creative pursuit without taking a responsibility he should have taken has been more difficult than my initial feeling of betrayal. That’s because acknowledging the mortality of your idol is difficult in a world where we are conditioned to find an “aesthetic” that competes with other identities for dominance.

        We idolize celebrities who we love because they create works that speak to us personally. When Frank repeats softly, “I’ll do anything for you,” on “Seigfried,” I think of every person I want to hold close. When he sings, “I’m sure we’re taller in another dimension” on “White Ferrari,” I see every regret I harbor flash before my eyes and think about changing them. Because of this, we imbue the artist with parts of ourselves and form an expectation that the artist truly represents the exact set of values that we do, that their work fits into our identity or aesthetic because we listen to them and feel a certain way for doing so. It’s not just that you want to be like your favorite celebrity and lead the life they do. The art that the artist produces causes your perception of the artist’s traits to become extensions of your own, part of your identity (see worst case scenario: the guy who literally identifies as Jimin from BTS). That’s why fans of entertainment like music or sports are constantly comparing their favorite albums or artists or teams to each other: because they feel like a part of their identity is at risk when someone else tells them that no, actually AI YoungBoy 2 is a better album than Melodrama. How dare the weird kid who always has his shirt off for some reason say that music that represents him is better than my precious depression music! [just kidding. I love Lorde.] 

        The FT interview calls Frank an “empire building individual,” and it felt off-putting for that reason. FT tries very hard to build Frank up as a genius, like Frank somehow paid them off to write up the strangest flex of all time with quotes like “I’m perfectly happy wearing $3m worth of jewellery and going to the studio, or for a walk in the desert.” But clearly, it wasn’t the same genius that fans saw. They ranted furiously about how hypocritical it was that the same man who rapped about “Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends” was now selling loose ends to super rich kids. 

        To be quite honest, most of the quotes from Frank, like the one about the $3m jewelry pieces, weren’t very tone-deaf and didn’t read as rich person asserting superiority over poor people. Frank doesn’t go outside and flex his wealth on other people: the man barely makes any public appearances. That’s why the context behind every single quote is that all the material has personal value to him: “I just do what feels authentic and what feels right for me,” Frank says. I see absolutely zero problem with Frank telling the world about what he likes or what he wanted as a child. It’s funny how white middle class men feel attacked by a queer Black man who made it out of poverty just because he wants to talk about his own wealth to promote his new brand. 

       The reason why it is so hard for us fans to live with a new, inaccessible creative direction from Frank is because our perception of who Frank is has been shattered by the fact that this project exists and is incompatible with his previous work. This is not the Frank Ocean of relatability, the muse of deep affection that keeps me coming back to Blonde over and over again. This is Frank going in a new direction where he seeks to leave a physical mark on the world through the creation of value, that just happens to benefit rich people because the most common way that we assign value to objects is ultimately money. 

Yes, artists make mistakes. But their life and work doesn’t fit into a narrative of what us as fans believe it to be. Lorde doesn’t release music because she thinks “haha, the depressed teenagers will really fuck with this one.” She does it because it’s personal and reflects her feelings. Artists can pursue new creative directions without having to appeal to the same audience as before, because their purpose is to express their own selves, not those who believe that they are represented by said artist. Obviously, the Frank Ocean of aloof luxury jewelry brand Homer does not seem like the same Frank Ocean who wrote lines dissecting uber rich lifestyles—but in reality they are the same person (listen to “RAF,” a song about others not touching your expensive Raf Simons clothes that Frank was prominently featured on in 2017) and fans must deal with that. Frank is allowed to pursue whatever art he wants, because that is what drives his personal creative growth, as he says so himself: “I’m very fortunate to be someone who can make someone else feel like they have possibilities, and I think that will make art and fashion richer for it.”