Review Summary: An album that, better than any other album, can make you understand how an album can be a bad album.
It’s always frustrating when things that you thought had previously defined you get usurped by militant groups with good PR. I myself felt that sting when mohawks, sleeveless flannel and army boots were commissioned by radical lesbians. I can only imagine how R.Kelly must feel to see someone get success from apathetically mumbling about inane sexual activity over undercooked melodies.
Sometimes, the path of least resistance can be a grand thing. There’s a reason why Fred Flinstone slid down the back of a brontosaurus at the end of a long work day. Stegosauruses may look cooler, but sliding down its back would rip your asshole so bad it’d look like Lana Del Ray’s mouth. So I understand why Blond feels so effortless (as in devoid of any feeling of effort put in). But while Blond certainly has some words set over some music, what it doesn’t have is oomph, zing, moxie, pep, vim, zip, welly, pizzazz or hutzpah.
The soundscapes of Blond are a staggering paradox. A puzzling show of how something so flimsy can also feel so long. Like third-year philosophy classes, the second season of True Detective, movies with Greta Gerwig, Ulysses and so on. It’s a process similar to eating the insides of your own cheeks. It feels nourishing in the moment, but you aren’t adding anything that wasn’t there before.
The token product placement is similarly baffling. While Ocean seems pretty keen on getting some free Nikes out of the deal, he does so by sacrificing far superior product. ‘Turf, not Astro,’ he mutters. I guess having foot swag is more important than a well-maintained lawn. News to me.
As most things tend to be relative, Ocean has good poetry. Terse witticisms traverse Blonde:
‘Why you think I’m in this bitch wearing a ***ing Yarmulke?’ - which I believe is either the slogan for the Rabbi Teamster Union, or what’s going through Mel Gibson’s head as he asks a Hollywood producer for money.
‘Your speckled face’ - either someone with bad acne, or a sexy plasterer perhaps.
‘She wanted me to accept her on Facebook.
And I don’t want it because I was like in front of her.
And she told me like Accept Me on Facebook.
It was virtual, means no sense.’ - which could be like social commentary on like acceptance, or like our society’s dependence on like Facebook, or maybe like needy people who are always like lurking around. Either way, means no sense.
‘We know you’re sugar’- pointing at things in a kitchen.
On Futura Free, Ocean also rhymes momma with momma several times, achieving the most jarringly lazy rhyming since the aforementioned R.Kelly’s infinite ‘closet’ loop. Seems like a strange choice when llama and pajama were right there for the taking.
All in all, this album perfectly captures the kind of lobotomized numbness that music critics like to call ‘meditative.’ It is also a terrifyingly stark example of just how detached from their own culture black people have to be nowadays in order to move records. The gentle and unimposing blips and bloops of Blond are the shuffling sounds of another low-income neighborhood being displaced for a hand-churned organic frozen yogurt chain. Those few months in 1994, when Dennis Rodman was ***ing Madonna, was perhaps the freest time in all our lives.
