What followed up this round of collaborations is now an afterthought: Frank would go on to release three full-lengths in four years to become one of the decade’s most celebrated artists and a flag-bearer for underground R&B. The Nostalgia, Ultra effect kicked in right away. Months in, he also wound up featuring on Kanye West & Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne. ![]() His mixtape called the attention of Beyoncé, who quickly cast Frank to her studio. ![]() Similar to “American Wedding,” Frank re-worked staple cuts and transformed them into original narratives without letting these high-profile samples outshine his flair to tell a story. The first tracks, “Street Fighter” and “Strawberry Swing,” lift instrumental bases from Coldplay Radiohead’s “Optimistic” can be spotted on “Bitches Talkin ” and closing track “Nature Feels” is a remake of MGMT’s “Electric Feel.” Samples, for their part, are far from obscure. Nostalgia, Ultra, adorned by the mesmerizing photograph of an orange BMW, and still absent from streaming services, features 14 tracks that touch upon the past, atom bombs on Frank’s lawn, divorce, numbness, and absent fathers. Instead, he christened Nostalgia, Ultra as a free mixtape and self-released it through his Tumblr, without further notes than a “Thank You” document and spell-binding artwork. To avoid lawsuits and paperwork (fully embracing controversy), Frank chose not to position his debut release as a commercial endeavor. In a nod to DIY punk culture, he didn’t clear at least 10 other samples, some of them sourced from other high-profile acts such as Coldplay and MGMT. That premise would hold, of course, if the record were to be issued by a label. In the lawsuit-laden world of music licensing and sample snitching, using such a backdrop for a new song would mean paying licensing fees, not to mention poking the Eagles for permission. When Frank Ocean-then known as a member of the hip-hop collective Odd Future-shared his debut release, Nostalgia, Ultra, in 2011, he included a full remake of “Hotel California.” The track, which has since been re-named “American Wedding,” is a flagrant imitation a brass-necked R&B rendition of rock’s most sacred chord progression. Even so, one of year’s most successful singles was “Hotel California” by the Eagles, a classic rock staple that sold millions of copies worldwide and even spawned cult-following one-liners. ![]() Music fans may recall 1977 as the dawn of an era in which punk rock, running on the finite power of controversy, short haircuts, and untargeted scorn, set off a wildfire in the discourse around rock and roll.
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