Frank Ocean, born on 28th October 1987 is an American singer, record producer, songwriter, rapper, visual artist, and photographer. He is prominent for his elliptical songwriting, idiosyncratic musical style, and wide vocal range. Frank Ocean started his music career as a ghostwriter before joining the hip-hop collective “Odd Future” in 2010.
A year later, he released his debut “mixtape Nostalgia” and successfully secured a recording contract with “Def Jam Recording.” Frank’s debut studio album “Channel Orange (2012) was ranked among the best albums of 2012 and nominated for the Album of the year, and even won the Best Urban Contemporary album during the 2013 Grammy Awards.
Frank Ocean started his music career while still working at different fast-food restaurants and even doing service jobs to support his music, a demonstration of dedication and passion. He established himself as a songwriter in around or less than three years. His mother introduced him to music when he was five years where she would play jazz music on her car stereo. We have compiled the best Frank Ocean quotes to motivate you to fight for your dreams and aim to live your best life despite your backgrounds
Frank Ocean Quotes
1. “Don’t feel sad over someone who gave up on you, feel sorry for them because they gave up on someone who would have never given up on them.”– Frank Ocean
2. “We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor – got her master’s with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.”– Frank Ocean
3. “I’m extremely compassionate, loving, all of those warm fuzzy things, but the outer shell doesn’t project that all the time.”– Frank Ocean
4. “Spaceships are lifting off of a dying world and millions are left behind while the sky burns.”– Frank Ocean
5. “In art, at a certain level, there is no ‘better than.’ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.”– Frank Ocean
6. “Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.”– Frank Ocean
7. “Super-envious of the fact that Daft Punk can wear robot helmets and be one of the most famous bands in the world, while also understanding that will never be my situation.”– Frank Ocean
8. “My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.”– Frank Ocean
9. “If someone breaks your heart, just punch them in the face. Seriously. Punch them in the face and go get some ice cream.”– Frank Ocean
10. “People are just afraid of things too much … Sure, evil exists, extremism exists. Somebody could commit a hate crime and hurt me. But they could do the same just because I’m black. They could do the same just because I’m American.”– Frank Ocean
11. “I won’t touch on risky, because that’s subjective. People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.”– Frank Ocean
12. “We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I’m going to be alive, I want to be challenged – to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn’t an easy way, but it’s a rewarding way.”– Frank Ocean
13. “As a writer, as a creator, I’m giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain’t got to pry beyond that.”– Frank Ocean
14. “The idea of recognizing your strengths and using them in as versatile a way as you can is cool to me.”– Frank Ocean
15. “Don’t ever play with someone’s feelings, you could win the game but you could lose that person forever.”– Frank Ocean
16. “I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.”– Frank Ocean
17. “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 – sonic goodies.”– Frank Ocean
18. “I don’t know if I ever told you this before, but you’re the only one I ever waited for this long.”– Frank Ocean
19.Each individual’s success as a solo artist is pretty much a win for the whole team .”– Frank Ocean
20. “What do you think my brain is made for? Is it just a container for the mind? This great grey matter, Sensei replied what is your woman, Is she just a container for the child? That soft pink matter.”– Frank Ocean
21. “If it brings me to my knees, it’s a bad religion.”– Frank Ocean
22. “Don’t confuse my personality with my attitude. My personality is who I am, and my attitude depends on who you are.”– Frank Ocean
23. “The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.”– Frank Ocean
24. “It’s not always easy to be transparent about your emotions and sometimes the music can get heavy.”– Frank Ocean
25. “I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.”– Frank Ocean
26. “I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.”– Frank Ocean
27. “I can’t usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it’s new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it’s about function.”– Frank Ocean
28. “It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.”– Frank Ocean
29. “When you write a song like ‘Forrest Gump,’ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.”– Frank Ocean
30. “Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.”– Frank Ocean
31. “I believe that marriage isn’t between a man and woman, but between love and love.”– Frank Ocean
32. “Distance sometimes lets you know who’s worth keeping and who’s worth letting go.”– Frank Ocean
33. “A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a Duke in a past life.”– Frank Ocean
34. “I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go to form of communication.”– Frank Ocean
35. “How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.”– Frank Ocean
36. “I quit writing, I kept living, I kept loving, and when the ink dries and the pages turn to dust so will we.”– Frank Ocean
37. “When you’re happy you enjoy the music, but when you’re sad you understand the lyrics.”– Frank Ocean
38. “I play piano every day. I enjoy that.”– Frank Ocean
39. “As long as your intentions are solid and about growth and progression and being productive and not being idle, then you’re doing good in my book.”– Frank Ocean
40.” I wrote ‘Channel Orange’ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.”– Frank Ocean
41. “In the studio, we adhere to a strict colour code. Developed over decades, the colour code consists of a finite and precise colour palate… The whole world as we experience it comes to us through the mystic realm of colour.”– Frank Ocean
42. “All in all, I just don’t trust journalists – and I don’t think it’s a good practice for me to trust journalists.”– Frank Ocean
43. “It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.”– Frank Ocean
44. “One winter morning I went for a drive, I stopped somewhere between June and July.”– Frank Ocean
45. “Once I catch you in one lie, it makes me question everything you said.”– Frank Ocean
46. “The Internet is just another experiment showing us more sides of us.”– Frank Ocean
47. “I don’t ever want to be caught up in a system of thinking I can do one thing ‘cos that’s just… that’s just telling yourself a lie.”– Frank Ocean
48. “This unrequited love, to me it’s nothing but a one-man cult/And cyanide in my styrofoam cup.”– Frank Ocean
49. “Those who are heartless, once cared too much.”– Frank Ocean
50. “Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.”– Frank Ocean
Related: Frank Sinatra Quotes
What Happened to Frank Ocean?
If you are wondering why you haven’t heard from Frank lately, watch this video.
The secrets are revealed…
Frank Ocean Summary
Frank Ocean endured some difficult moments and hardship when trying to achieve his dreams. He lost his home and personal recording studio when Hurricane Karine struck in 2006. This affected his path including the college he was attending.
Despite all these difficulties, he showed that nothing could stop him from pursuing his dreams. He dropped out of school to concentrate on his music career. His quotes motivate us to never give up and rejuvenate the fighting spirit within us. We hope you enjoyed some of his most famous quotes.
Image Credit: david_hwang, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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