Frank Ocean talks new album and passes on Kanye West collaboration

During his recent trip to the UK, Frank Ocean stopped by BBC 1Xtra after his performance on Friday to talk about his upcoming album and why he’s passing on a Kanye West collaboration.

“I’m a big fan. He’s a big influence on my music. I told him, ‘As much as I want to work with you, I kinda want to do this without you.’ I kinda want to do it on my own. I worked with one producer, who I found some really random synergy with, a producer named Malay out in L.A., and we worked for the first couple days and did some crazy feeling songs, like the Untitled #2 was the first or second song that we wrote together.”

Further delving into his upcoming new album, the reclusive crooner told:

“I wanted it to be an expansion, sonically I wanted to be the next, whatever the next tier for me is, be that. Just open up, challenging song structures, challenging a lot of the things I made on the last project. When I say the whole ‘I’m not an R&B artist’ thing, people often think I’m taking a shot at the genre of R&B,” Ocean said, “which to me I’ll say, ‘Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, D’Angelo who is awesome, I mean what is Prince? What are all of them?’”"