Why is frank ocean gay

No choice. It was my first love, it changed my life. An unprecedented juncture for Black masculinity at the time and a revelation that would go on to empower a generation. I was a rapper in my early twenties then, quietly gay, always careful not to divulge the pronouns of my bedmates in songs or interviews.

So for me, like many queer artists navigating the music business at the time, sexuality was something to be discreet about, a self-imposed silence that Frank Ocean helped to free me from. His candid statement would go on to be far more ground-breaking than the lo-fi Helvetica.

An awakening that would plant a seed of emancipation, not just for the music industry, but for the entertainment business at large. It was also a masterclass in songwriting, with each composition showcasing a flair for honesty and vulnerability.

But above all it was uniquely accessible. Refusing to be marginalised as niche or specialist. Now make no mistake, queer artists have every right to be as loud and proud as we desire when it comes to grand declarations of love or bold proclamations of gender expression. Both Blonde and Endless , a minute visual album that features Ocean constructing a staircase to a soundtrack of ethereal avant-pop, bask in ambiguity. They are textured, shape-shifting, introspective mood pieces that unfurl in stream-of-consciousness fashion.

In Endless , Ocean tears through a wardrobe-full of fashion-forward ensembles, sporting each one with confidence and ease. It celebrates the intangible, the strange. The page glossy boasts images of both nude men and women, including shots from gay art photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. Another photo, taken by Ocean himself, shows a man putting on his underwear next to a car in a field. I was 19 years old. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer after, together.

Every day almost, and on the day we were together, time would glide. Most of the day I'd see him, and his smile. By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant. It was hopeless," Ocean writes. The truth: there is a specificity to what black people who identify as LGBTQ come up against in our day-to-day lives, but specificity outlines the lives of all queer people across varied races and ethnic groups.

It can often feel as if there is a clamor for representation to the point where people are willing to magnify moments that are actually miniscule. All levels of progress should be celebrated, but within reason.

And, in this instance, with the understanding that artists like Mykki Blanco, Young M. A, and Syd have spoken to queer realities with just as much clarity, if not more. Anything else portrays a far more progressive reality than we actually live in.