When he's not looking back, he's still living in his head. It's all in his wistful, often self-effacing perspective and numbed, restrained delivery, heard at full power in 'Songs for Women,' where he tries to arrange an after-school rendezvous in his dad's empty house and brags about 'harmonizing to Otis, Isley, Marvin' but eventually laments that his woman doesn't listen to him or his music: 'It's like she never heard of me.' Much of the material indeed carries a longing for the past - strange since Ocean is still in his early twenties.

Ocean's uniqueness doesn't lie in the productions he uses - they're neither exceptional nor particularly left of center here - or his range of inspirations and references. Ocean also weaves clever threads, like mentioning Stanley Kubrick one moment and sampling dialogue from the director's Eyes Wide Shut during another.

It shifts between original material - produced by Christopher 'Tricky' Stewart, MIDI Mafia, Happy Perez, and James Fauntleroy II - and anti-pigeonhole re-voicings of songs by Coldplay, Mr. Compared to most releases of its kind, Nostalgia, Ultra is plotted with care, not slapped together with haste. Frank Ocean co-wrote songs for John Legend ('Quickly') and Brandy ('1st & Love'), signed to Def Jam, and connected with rap group Odd Future, but his career as a solo artist did not gain traction until he linked to an upload of this, his first mixtape, on his Tumblr blog in early 2011.

Nostalgia ultra frank ocean full album