After Frank Ocean wiped his social media accounts, the rumour mill has gone into overdrive about his hotly-anticipated third album.
Usually, artists only ever delete the content on their Instagram when a new album is on the brink of being announced, and it represents a slate being cleaned. It’s been six years since Ocean shared Blonde, and fans believe the wait for Frank Ocean 3.0 is almost over.
Although, some were less optimistic, with one user saying: “Frank Ocean has probably cleared his Instagram 20 times in the last 4 years. He’s not dropping an album.”
Ocean hasn’t played live since 2017 and was supposed to make his comeback in 2020 at Coachella, but it was cancelled due to the pandemic. When the festival did announce it would return two years later, organisers revealed the singer wouldn’t be appearing, although they did reveal he’d make his live return at the event in 2023.
The co-founder of the event, Paul Tollett, spoke with the Los Angeles Times in 2021 and made the revelation. In the piece, journalist Steve Appleford wrote: “Normally, Tollett would never reveal the name of any act so far in advance, but he says fans deserve some reassurance after the chaos and uncertainty of the last year and a half.”
Surely, there’s no way Ocean returns to the live stage at Coachella without a new album in tow? Even if he worked at a snail’s pace since Blonde, the singer-songwriter must have accumulated enough material for a new album by now, and the Californian festival will likely be the place where he makes his grand comeback.
