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Nostalgia ultra tracklist3/17/2023 ![]() ![]() Others, like Ocean’s re-imagined version of “Strawberry Swing,” portray a purer love, even in the face of an apocalyptic end. Some songs, like “Novacane” and “LoveCrimes,” are built to be pessimistic, demonstrating Ocean’s distrust of love and its sources (“Novacane” is also a thinly-veiled shot at the type of music that Ocean used to write for other artists). Nostalgia is the sound of Ocean breaking free from the constraints he’d worked under as a writer-for-hire, building a dark, relatively sparse album with a central theme of struggling with love. The link leads to a now-dead Mediafire download of the album, for free, with no backing from Def Jam, and likely without a single person at the label knowing about a single second of it before its release. February 16 came, and Ocean posted an album cover to his Tumblr with no warning, and only a humorous exchange for context. nostalgia came together quickly, fueled by Ocean’s desire to do what he wanted to do, meet the goals he’d set when he’d moved out to the west coast five years prior. Ocean grabbed beats from friends, and looked all over the Internet for interesting songs to rework for himself, unable to generate his own backing tracks at the time. But he kept his eyes on the bigger prize – his own album. By definition, he was an outsider, but he was accepted into the fold just like any of the group’s other members, despite being far older than any of them. Ocean eventually grew tired of it, gravitating to the young, quickly-developing Odd Future collective, lending his vocals to songs on nearly every Odd Future-associated album released ever since. Def Jam signed him like he was a trophy, an indicator that they could grab up hot names before they could become hot. ![]() No advance for a record, no promotion, no singles, no nothing. Def Jam signed him for his potential and promptly let him sit and rot on the shelf. Def Jam signed him after he made waves in the industry for the songs he wrote for artists as varied as Justin Bieber, John Legend, and Rihanna, moving to California in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to make a career out of his love of music and songwriting talent. nostalgia was released for free on February 16, 2011, the product of frustration and neglect on the part of Ocean’s record label. Ocean’s random cameos in the music of his friends and the Circle of Jay spurred me to put both channel ORANGE and nostalgia,ULTRA. five years ago this month, Ocean seems to have become content with sitting on the sidelines, chipping away at an album at least three years in the making. Just as suddenly as he burst onto the scene with nostalgia,ULTRA. He’s surfaced for minor features – on Kanye West’s “ New Slaves,” Jay-Z’s “Oceans,” Earl Sweatshirt’s “Sunday,” several Tyler, the Creator tracks, Beyoncé’s “ Superpower,” and West’s “ Wolves” – and he’s released one or two tracks of his own, in “Hero” for Converse, Django Unchained soundtrack b-side “Wise Man,” and two preview tracks from an alleged new album, but his public appearances have been incredibly few and far between, especially since his gorgeous Grammys 2013 performance (where he was fucking shafted, I might remind you), and any hints of a new album are even less frequent. Frank Ocean has made himself infuriatingly elusive since dropping channel ORANGE, one of the best albums of the year, in 2012. ![]()
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