I wish you could see what I see
Frank Ocean - 'End' (Channel Orange - 2012)
The secret to understanding the end1 of channel ORANGE by Frank Ocean is the sound of a door shutting and the 2006 movie ATL.
Before that, it is worth revisiting where Ocean came from. Looking back at the potential of Odd Future, it was always Tyler The Creator that got the attention and seemed the most likely on that basis. Even with the release of the mixtape nostalgia,ULTRA and the positive reviews that release garnered, that prediction seemed to be holding. channel ORANGE was different. It was a step-up in both songwriting and production and was rewarded with some of the best reviews of 2012, praising how it mixes jazz, electro, soul, pop, funk with elements of psychedelia. It also, much like Queen of The Stone Age’s Songs for The Deaf, plays out like a car radio on a journey, contains snatches of film dialogue and ambient interludes around colossal hits like ‘Pyramids’, ‘Lost’ and ‘Super Rich Kids’ before cutting off midway through and moving on to the next piece.
After 50 odd minutes of 90’s aping R&B and flourishes that recall Stevie Wonder’s classic run of albums in the 1970s, we reach ‘End’.
On ‘End’, the scenario that plays out is Ocean and a woman in the backseat of a car, and we join the aftermath of the encounter; it finishes with a re-enactment of the car scene in ATL where New-New tells Rashad how she feels about him. On the album Ocean’s own unreleased/released on Tumblr, ‘Voodoo’ plays in the background, while in the movie, Aaliyah’s At Your Best is playing, a song Ocean would cover for his visual album Endless.
The song/skit is an end; we can hear the rain falling outside the car, while rain can represent new beginnings and the washing away of the sins of the past - here, it only portrays sadness at the end of a relationship. - It is where we thought we would always get to after “Thinking Bout You”.
The song sounds like it is being beamed up from the earth’s centre; it feels like it weighs so much. It waxes and wanes, disconnecting and fading out before we get to do the conclusion. After the girl tells Frank how great he is, we sense that something is afoot. Ocean leaves and sighs, then we hear the door shutting behind him. Over the course of a couple of minutes, it is clear that our time with Ocean and channel ORANGE is over.
A quick note on pedantry; Streaming versions of the album finish on ‘End’ and CD versions have ‘Golden Girl‘ too after a minute or so of silence - I’m considering ‘Golden Girl’ a bonus track to suit my narrative.