Tim WalkerFrank Ocean grew up in The Big Easy, and he reveals his childhood in New Orleans was not easy.
“I was expelled and suspended it felt like every five minutes,” the two-time Grammy winner says in the W Magazine October cover story.
Ocean says his behavior changed when “I became obsessed with figuring out how to make a career in music. And that interest fostered a different mentality. I think it was also around the transition to becoming a teenager, and I got really calm.”
Fans are anxiously waiting for the 31-year old singer to drop the follow-up to his 2016 platinum album, Blonde. For his new music, he says don’t expect him to expose his soul as he has in the past.
“I believed for a very long time that there was strength in vulnerability, and I really don’t believe that anymore,” Ocean says. “It’s just this realization that hit me: Oh, right, it’s a choice whether you will be truthful or a liar.”
“I’m more interested in lies than that,” he continues. “Like, give me a full motion-picture fantasy.”
The “Thinkin’ ‘Bout You” singer also says he’s craving working with other artists.
“I’ve never been in a band or had a songwriting partner or been with a group,” he says. “I like the parts of the process where I work with session musicians or with other record producers or featured artists and guest vocalists.”
Ocean rarely grants interviews, and he says he can’t believe that people are interested in what he has to say.
“I wake up shocked that I do what I do for a living,” he says, “and at the strangeness of being a figure that is asked questions, and that people want to talk about my thoughts or my anything.”
