Frank Ocean Speaks All Things “Channel Orange”

In his first interview after his personal outage, Frank Ocean called into Zane Lowe on BBC Radio 1 and discussed his Def Jam debut album, Channel Orange. They talked about recording in a house, the early release and the few collaborations.

See below.

“It was actually the plan all along. I kinda wanted to mirror what Jay and Kanye did with Watch the Throne, preventing the leak by staggering digital and physical dates. I wanted all the promotional elements to follow the album, with the videos and the tour, and do everything after and let the music speak for itself.”

Even though he’s signed to a major label, he’d much rather record in a Beverly Hills house.

Instead of paying $1,600/day to rent a studio, Ocean rented a mansion in Beverly Hills, but only ended up making three songs there—”Lost,” “Pyramids,” and “Analog 2″ featuring Tyler, the Creator. “I had the housekeeper daily. It was great, it was awesome,” laughed Frank.

The album only has a few collaborations. Why?

“It was important for me to do the project with a limited amount of people and I got the opportunity, which I value so greatly, to sit with some of my creative heroes and play them the songs in different stages of completion and get input and get feedback. I tried to make something that was true to what I heard in my head and true to what I thought the future should be for me music-wise.”

Listen below for the whole interview