- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Jul 24, 2012The combination of his idiosyncratic creative mind with his highly personal and conflicted lyrics has resulted in something spectacular.
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Jul 18, 2012The album doesn't have as many slyly powerful hooks as Nostalgia, Ultra, but Ocean's descriptive and subtle storytelling is taken to a higher level.
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Jul 19, 2012It's a headphone masterpiece that bangs on shelf speakers.
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Jul 18, 2012What remains is a solid collection of pop-soul renderings through which Ocean tries to find himself.
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Jul 18, 2012In addition to being one of the year's most soberingly bleak R&B releases, Channel Orange is also one of the prettiest.
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Jul 18, 2012No matter what Ocean's mood is on the album, the songs sound fantastic.... it's one of the best albums of the year.
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Jul 18, 2012Channel Orange stands strong on its own merits.
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Jul 18, 2012Channel Orange creates a state of mind with words and sound.
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Jul 18, 2012Channel Orange demands to be listened to in a single sitting.
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Jul 19, 2012The roominess and the variety are what make this album so interesting.
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Jul 27, 2012Channel Orange is going to be the standard to beat for some time. And it might very well be the best R&B album of our young decade.
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Jul 18, 2012Even though other recent interviews and richly realized tracks like those imply that Ocean's songwriting is just a vessel, his own devil is still in the details, and that's what makes his music compelling.
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Jul 25, 2012Vastly rich... Ocean's voice is a thing of beauty – clear, crisp and almost, divine – he speaks of truth in an unabashed manner.
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Jul 18, 2012This is more than an album, this is a moment in music history. Enjoy it.
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Jul 23, 2012Beyond genre lines, racial lines, sexuality lines, any lines you can think of, it's that all-too-rare gem: a universal story you'll come back to long after the hype's been and gone.
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Jul 18, 2012Ocean is less concerned with urban realism than with his own '80s-noir fantasy of what the city's like, and his music captures that vibe perfectly, pulsing with electro-soul grooves, vintage jazz-funk.
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Jul 24, 2012What it is, frankly speaking, is one of the brightest R&B-flavoured projects to touch the mainstream in a long time.
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Jul 20, 2012The musical craft on this almost sampleless album is so even-keeled that there's no song here as forgettable as "There Will Be Tears" or "Dust" either.
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Jul 18, 2012A largely beatific album, it propagates love over high living, but also shipped is the urban locale, the one-dimensional serenading and the cartoonish sexuality that informs a significant percentage of mainstream r'n'b, substituted for the same precocious wisdom, emotional intelligence, writerly nuance and reasoned portrayal of lust displayed on the Tumblr post.
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Jul 27, 2012Ignore whatever purist backlash you may encounter. In Channel Orange, we have been granted a truly classic document, perhaps the very first that feels synchronized with the present decade.
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Jul 18, 2012The album is a storyteller's album. In fact, it's an immensely inclusive R&B album.
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MojoAug 8, 2012[A] rich and complex album. [Sep 2012, p.95]
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Jul 18, 2012Channel Orange hasn't so much been crafted into being as grown from the passion of one man, an extension of the Frank Ocean psyche into audible form.
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Aug 6, 2012Despite its faults, Channel ORANGE still marks Frank Ocean out as an intriguing and exciting artist. It's a contradiction in many ways: a far-from-perfect album that suggests a long and prosperous career; an artist without an exceptional voice who looks like he will instead become an exceptional voice.
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Jul 18, 2012It's simultaneously of the moment and an undeniable classic.
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Jul 19, 2012The music is powerful, but the moods and mental space Channel Orange occupies are often macabre.
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Jul 18, 2012The compassionate understanding of human nature, is the guiding ethos behind Channel Orange, a very beautiful album about not-so-beautiful people.
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Jul 18, 2012While Channel Orange is stuffed with one-of-a-kind details and characters, its overall scope is grand, as is Ocean's.
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Jul 18, 2012While it may hard to both live up to hype and craft something distinct in a young career already brimming with excellent releases, channel ORANGE finds Frank Ocean rising to the challenge with a class unlike anyone in music these days.
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Q MagazineAug 20, 2012While Ocean's artistic ambition is impressive, it's his haunting candour that really casts a spell. [Sep 2012, p.106]
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Jul 24, 2012channel ORANGE is filled with brave music.
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Jul 18, 2012When Ocean reins himself in, tucking his words and melodies into tighter verse-chorus structures, the songs have startling force.
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Jul 18, 2012Channel Orange is so textured, complex, and mature that Ocean's recent coming out feels like a footnote, rather than the entire story. It's a revelation that only further colors the tales of longing and disappointment found on this impressive album.
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Jul 18, 2012Channel ORANGE feels like one long, moonlit, air-conditioned ride.
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Jul 18, 2012With Channel Orange Frank Ocean has proven himself as one of the most significant artists in popular music today; his next effort will definitely have the potential to be a genre classic.
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Jul 24, 2012Channel Orange is so arrestingly smooth that all of its unusually shaped pieces fit together as a seamless whole.
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Jul 24, 2012Ocean brings substance with style, rather than style demanding to be considered substance.
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Aug 2, 2012In throwing his emotional locker wide open, Frank Ocean has made a tender, engrossing classic.
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Jul 18, 2012For now, the best tribute you can pay Channel Orange is that, while it plays, you forget about the chatter and just luxuriate in a wildly original talent.
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Jul 18, 2012"I wanted", Ocean wrote, "to create worlds that were rosier than mine. I tried to channel overwhelming emotions." Mission accomplished, and then some.
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Jul 18, 2012Only at two or three points in the album does it feel like Ocean is actively courting heavy radio play.... The rest of the album, however, feels too offbeat and diffuse to trouble the top end of the charts. Is this a bad thing? Not at all.
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Jul 18, 2012Channel Orange is a staggering step upwards from Nostalgia.
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Jul 18, 2012Channel Orange is as dazzling as it is baffling, rarely staying still long enough to get a grip on.
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Jul 18, 2012Ocean's work is almost as good as those he references; his lyrics are almost uniformly terrific, sensual, specific, and unpredictable.
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UncutSep 14, 2012Sumptuous and sprawling, his major label debut comfortably backs up the hype. [Oct 2012, p.86]
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Jul 20, 2012It stands tall as the best R&B album in a long while, if not the best album in a long while.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 1,048 out of 1141
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Mixed: 38 out of 1141
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Negative: 55 out of 1141
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Jul 18, 2012one word...beautiful.
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Jul 18, 2012
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Jul 18, 2012