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Music

Frank Ocean's Blonde Named Best Album of the Decade

What a perfect way to honor one of the best albums of our time!

Taylor Henderson

Taylor Henderson is a PRIDE.com contributor. This proud Texas Bama studied Media Production/Studies and Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin, where he developed his passions for pop culture, writing, and videography. He's absolutely obsessed with Beyoncé, mangoes, and cheesy YA novels that allow him to vicariously experience the teen years he spent in the closet. He's also writing one!

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Taylor Henderson

cornbreadsays

October 10 2019 5:12 PM EST

May 26 2023 12:37 PM EST

2019 is coming to a close, so you might be asking, "What are the best albums of the decade?

According to Pitchfork's ranking of this decade's best LPs, Frank Ocean released the best album of our time with Blonde.

The experimental R&B musician exploded onto the scene back in 2012 with his debut album channel ORANGE and lead single "Thinkin' Bout You." Just before the album's release the singer wrote a letter on Tumblr, detailing a romance with a man. It went viral, and changed the face of hip-hop and R&B forever.

He followed that critical success up in 2016 with Endless, an exclusive visual album available to Apple Music subscribers, thereby fulfiling his contract to his record label. A day later, he surprise-dropped Blonde indepently, and a worldwide hush seemed to settle as we all sat down and listened.

"Frank Ocean is the hinge artist of our time, the true voice of a generation because he takes long silences," writes Pitchfork. "The year 2016 crystallized the political disaster right under the surface. People theorized that we needed anthems to get us through the dark night. Big choruses, hooks as wide as highway signs, regular percussion that could gird us from chaos. But our mood was languorous; jingoism was the problem in the first place. We wanted the blurred, the softened, the existential. 'Inhale, in hell, there’s heaven,' Ocean sings on 'Solo,' capturing the whiplash experience of being young in this country in one line. Blonde is one synonym for American."