page_title: Channel Orange
section_title: Writing
hierarchical_section_title: Channel Orange / Writing
caption_attribution_description: Frank Ocean at a listening event in Los Angeles on December 2, 2011.
context_page_description: Channel Orange is the debut studio album by American R&B singer and songwriter Frank Ocean. It was released on July 10, 2012, by Def Jam Recordings.
  After releasing his mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra in 2011, Ocean began writing new songs with Malay, a producer and songwriter who assisted him with recording his debut album at EastWest Studios in Hollywood. Rather than rely on samples as he had with his mixtape, Ocean wanted to approach sound and song structure differently on Channel Orange. Other producers to work on the album included Om'Mas Keith and Pharrell Williams. Its recording also featured guest appearances from Odd Future rappers Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler, the Creator, vocalist/songwriter André 3000, and guitarist John Mayer.
  Channel Orange has an unconventional musical style, drawing on electro-funk, pop-soul, jazz-funk, psychedelic music, and nonmusical sounds such as film dialogue and ambient noise that function as interludes. Vocally, Ocean uses a free-form flow as well as alternating falsetto and tenor registers throughout the album.
context_section_description: Ocean started writing songs for Channel Orange in February 2011 with songwriter and producer Malay, his friend and creative partner since their start in the music industry as songwriters. They originally met in Atlanta and worked for the same publishing company, through which they reconnected after Malay moved to Los Angeles. Ocean spent more time with Malay, introducing him to his Odd Future collective, while connecting creatively through their respective songwriting, which led to their partnership for Channel Orange. For the album, Ocean wrote his lyrics to complement Malay's ideas for the music. Occasionally, they wrote songs together by improvising musical ideas from Malay's keyboard and guitar playing. Channel Orange was written in two weeks, according to the singer.
   
  Although Ocean had creative freedom for both projects, he felt more confident as a songwriter for Channel Orange and typed his lyrics on a laptop rather than composing in his head as he had done for Nostalgia, Ultra. Since transitioning from writing for other artists, he had been influenced by his "gloriously painful love life" when writing songs. For his lyrics, Ocean used both his past personal experiences and imagination to compose narratives for songs. He was inspired to write the song "Crack Rock" by stories he heard sitting in on Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous groups mentored by his grandfather, who also dealt with substance abuse in his youth. In an interview for The Guardian, Ocean expressed uncertainty about his penchant for darker subject matter, but speculated that "those were the colours I had to work with on those days. ... I mean, 'experience' is an interesting word. I just bear witness."
  In June 2012, news outlets and music journalists from pre-release listening events for Channel Orange raised questions about certain songs' lyrics and Ocean's sexuality. The lyrics addressed a male object of love and deviated from the heterosexual perspective of his past songs. Scrapping his original plan of including it in the album's liner notes, Ocean published a TextEdit file as an open letter through his Tumblr blog on July 4. Originally written in December 2011, it recounted his unrequited feelings for a man when he was 19 years old, citing the experience as his first love. Ocean's disclosure was received with support from Def Jam and praise from other recording artists and cultural commentators. He also remarked on writing Channel Orange after years of emotional struggle with the experience, stating in the letter, "I wrote to keep myself busy and sane. I wanted to create worlds that were rosier than mine. I tried to channel overwhelming emotions."
  During their writing sessions, Malay noticed Ocean's use of gender pronouns in his lyrics, but attributed it to Ocean's poetic license rather than his sexuality. In an interview after Ocean's open letter, Malay called him "the new hybrid of what an MC used to be in the '80s or '90s ... the true storyteller" and said of the lyrics, "I don't think anyone during any given point during the creative process knew what was happening ... when he's singing maybe from a female perspective or whatever, it's a story, it's a world that he created. It's not necessarily his personal—like something that he's experiencing. Maybe it is and it's a metaphor the way he did it". They finished writing Channel Orange in two to three months. Ocean said of the album's development in an interview for Rap-Up, "It succinctly defines me as an artist for where I am right now and that was the aim. It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story and all kinds of sonic goodness."
caption: Ocean (photographed in 2011) mused over past experiences and pure fantasy when writing the album.[8]
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