We all know that Rihanna fans have been absolutely starved for new music from the pop icon, which is why the news of her Black Panther: Wakanda Forever single — her first since 2016 —had the internet in an absolute frenzy. But, if there’s another artist of similar stature with a similarly long silence, it’s Frank Ocean.
Luckily for us all, the enigmatic R&B superstar has made his return… kind of.
His return comes in the form of his new Apple Music 1 radio show, Homer Radio. This is his second show on the platform, following the launch and since-sporadic instalments of Blonded Radio, named after his last official full-length musical output, 2016’s Blonde.
In a description of the hour-long broadcast, Ocean wrote that it consists of what “plays around our office after hours.”
“Twin line array speakers hold court, they’re only a little loud. Someone’s vacuuming the carpets in another room adding white noise to the song. A security guard coming back up from a cigarette break can hear it all from inside the elevator. Magnified eyes see through a headset loaded with grids of light and lenses and loupes.
“Skulls on swivels make no sudden movements helicoptering over paperwork, pens, blades, vices, metals and gems. Artificial light pours from small canisters like those dragons that spring from cylinders, like the never-ending ribbons pulled from a magicians ear. Media fires back and forth and back again across the net. Sorkin-like walk and talks travel down the hallways further and further from the sound.
“This is Homer Radio. An office soundtrack. Can’t you hear our ‘voice’? It’s not a dead line.”
While Ocean hasn’t released a full-length album since 2016, he has sporadically shared one-off singles, which is more than what we could say for Rihanna up until this week’s announcement.