Frank Ocean comes out

Frank Ocean – the New Orleans native and Odd Future member responsible for some of the best modern soul music around – has posted on his Tumblr a screengrab of a Textedit file discussing his love for another man. It’s deeply brave, and moving, and you can read it below. He presaged this note with a post that hinted at the rumours concerning lyrics from his new album, ‘Orange’:

Based God is right: we’re all a bunch of golden million dollar babies. my hope is that the babies born these days will inherit less of the bullshit than we did. anyhow, what i’m about to post is for anyone who cares to read. it was intended to fill the thank you’s section in my album credits, but with all the rumors going round.. i figured it’d be good to clarify..

Tyler the Creator 55 minutes ago Tweeted this less poetic, but still fairly moving statement:

My Big Brother Finally Fucking Did That. Proud Of That Nigga Cause I Know That Shit Is Difficult Or Whatever. Anyway. Im A Toilet.

— Tyler, The Creator (@fucktyler) July 4, 2012

If you’d allow a little editorialising, wrapped up with a discussion of the processes of online journalism, I wasn’t sure how to title this piece – “Frank Ocean is gay” seemed a little crass. “Frank Ocean discusses his sexuality” seemed squeamish, while “Read a frank, brave letter” seemed unnecessarily sensationalist, despite the pun. Whether or not this actually was a story ran through my mind. But, shocking as this is in 2012, this is a story, and a major one – by my reckoning, Frank Ocean is the first major male singer or rapper of the hip hop generation to come out; and hopefully the last who has to endure online hacks discussing it. For this, we salute him.