Pharrel Williams confirms Frank Ocean is releasing new music
Pharrell Williams has recently suggested that Frank Ocean is working on new music and, better yet, a new album. The Neptunes superstar hasn’t been doing much promo since he began working as the creative director of menswear at Louis Vuitton last year and hasn’t spoken in-depth about music. However, he recently spoke with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe.
Williams and Lowe both love Frank Ocean, but the host explained how he wasn’t holding out much hope for an album or even a track from the Blonde creator. However, Williams wasn’t so sure and spoke about how Ocean is always in the studio.
Speaking about Ocean, Williams told the host, “Yeah, you know he’s cookin’?! Frank stays in the kitchen! And it’s probably the reason why he doesn’t serve as much. He really just enjoys the culinary process!”
The Channel Orange singer leaked a snippet of a track for fans last year, sending them into a fit of excitement. The last time the vocalist had previewed unreleased material was in July 2022. Still, unfortunately, his followers haven’t received a full-length solo project from the artist since he released Blonde in 2016.
The ‘Pyramids’ singer took to Instagram in November last year to post a minute-long snippet of a new, unreleased song. However, the story, which disappeared quickly, was recorded by social media users and began circulating like wildfire on X. Pharrell was visiting Apple Music to speak about his LEGO documentary, Piece By Piece. But, being the artist that he is he delved into music throughout the interview.
One thing the musician revealed is that his 2014 track ‘Happy’ came from a place of sarcasm. Recalling the story of how he was working tirelessly on a song for one particular scene in the Despicable Me 2 movie, he told Lowe that he turned in ‘Happy’ sarcastically after the producers had rejected all of his creations.
Detailing the experience that led to ‘Happy’, Williams stated, “This was nine songs that you were trying to complete a task for this film and all you kept hearing is ‘No, no no no no no no no no no no’ and then it was only until you were out of ideas and you asked yourself a rhetorical question, and you came back with a sarcastic answer — and that’s what ‘Happy’ was.”
Lowe asked Pharrell what the question that he asked himself was to elicit that sarcastic response and Williams responded, “How do you make a song that’s so happy that nothing can bring them down? So, I sarcastically answered it and put music to it and that sarcasm became the song — and that broke me. That all of what I thought was supposed to be, didn’t do that.”