Frank Ocean’s producer, Malay, did a Reddit AMA, and though he’s also worked with Alicia Keys, tUnE-yArDs, Angel Haze, John Legend, and Zayn Malik, and though he expressly said prior to the AMA that he wouldn’t talk about “the production, creation, or anything involving Frank’s new album” or Ocean’s “creative process,” the talk was still Ocean-oriented, occurring on the r/FrankOcean subreddit. And ultimately, he did sort of end up answering a question about the very mysterious and elusive upcoming(?) album Boys Don’t Cry. (Whose delayed release, incidentally, seems to have led to a major surge in sales of Channel Orange, and brought it back onto the charts for the first time in three years.)
One fan — who sounded more even-handed and less exasperated than many following the last unmet release date tease originally reported in the New York Times — said:
I respect that you don’t want us to ask about BDC and when it’s going to come out. So in the interest of asking a question that acknowledges those boundaries while still addressing the elephant in the room, I’d like to know what you think about how fans have interacted with the rollout to this point. I think the major pain point for fans has been the fact that Frank has led us to believe there’s something coming, and then he hasn’t communicated with us at all.
To which Malay responded:
First of all we all massively appreciate and love you guys, Frank has told me this himself many times. To be fair tho, art cannot be rushed. It’s about making sure the perfect aesthetic for the situation has been reached, to do that, takes constant tweaking, trial and error.. That goes for any creative sitution [sic].
He also partially denied the claim that an actual release date had ever been teased, saying, “Never heard of an actual date … Then again I don’t pay attention to a lot of stuff.”
Not many surprises here — unless you thought the delay was all a major, complex conspiracy, rather than somewhat more likely case of artistic perfectionism, which will ultimately likely benefit everyone when this thing actually drops…given that it seems they’re just trying to make it, you know, a good album.