Frank Ocean
Frank Ocean, photographed during a performance at Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee, on June 14, 2014, has released an album — but is it the album he promised fans? Getty Images

Many fans had given up on Frank Ocean by Thursday, when he suddenly reappeared before the camera on his mysterious Apple Music sponsored livestream. The feed first appeared on his website on Aug. 1, much to the confusion of viewers. Hundreds of thousands tuned in intently for days as he built a set of stairs, but the release date for his sophomore album, “Boys Don’t Cry,” came and went.

Weeks later Ocean has released an unexpected project — a visual album called “Endless.” According to a report from Rolling Stone, the Grammy award winner still intends to release “Boys Don’t Cry” but with a new title this weekend. “Endless” features 12 songs (though some outlets, including Entertainment Tonight, report it features 16) and several features from other artists including James Blake. The album is available for free strictly to Apple Music users HERE. The tracklist for “Endless” is as follows:

  1. “Device Control”
  2. “Alabama”
  3. “U-N-I-T-Y”
  4. “Commes Des Garcons”
  5. “Wither”
  6. “In Here Somewhere”
  7. “At Your Best (You Are Love)”
  8. “Mine”
  9. Ambience 001: “In a Certain Way”
  10. Ambience 002: “Honeybaby”
  11. “Hubolts”
  12. “Slide on Me”

Although “Boys Don’t Cry” — or whatever Ocean, 28, is calling his album these days — has yet to be released, details surrounding the project suggest it’s worth getting excited for. On Thursday, in an interview with Dazed, rapper Lil B opened up about the album. The California rapper said he worked closely with Ocean on “Boys Don’t Cry,” calling the reclusive recording artist “amazing” and “a very strong man.” Lil B did not reveal more about the album and suggested that fans should just wait and “see what Frank releases.”

“Frank Ocean was amazing. He called me to come out and do some stuff for his album, ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ that’s coming out,” Lil B said. “Frank is amazing. He’s a beautiful man with a beautiful voice. He’s a very strong man, a very strong person. Anything that I can do to help him, I will.”

It remains unclear if and when “Boys Don’t Cry” will actually be made available. While many reports suggest the album will be released this weekend, Ocean is known for missing release dates. In fact, his website currently features a library punch card full of dates “Boys Don’t Cry” was scheduled to come out ranging from July 2015 to November 2016. Producer Malay Ho recently opened up about the long wait during a Reddit AMA, telling fans that Ocean’s perfectionist nature was to blame. He said that Ocean is trying to ensure that the album has “the perfect aesthetic.”

“First of all we all massively appreciate and love you guys, Frank has told me this himself many times,” Ho said. “To be fair, art cannot be rushed. It’s about making sure the perfect aesthetic for the situation has been reached, to do that, takes constant tweaking, trial and error...That goes for any creative [situation].”

RELATED STORIES