He made us wait, and wait, and wait. Then, when we thought the wait was over last July, he made us wait some more. Then, when we thought the wait was over this July, he made us wait again. Two Fridays ago, we were sure the wait was over. It wasn’t. Even this Friday, when a real live actual clickable iTunes link suggested that the wait had been terminated, he made us wait just one more day.

But the wait is really over.

49 months and 11 days after dropping the debut album, channel ORANGE, that won him a Grammy and catapulted him into R&B and Soul music’s upper echelon, Frank Ocean has made his official return in the form of his sophomore LP, BLONDE. As expected, the project was made available exclusively on Apple Music just hours after a 45-minute visual album, the culmination of that maddening home improvement live stream that lasted roughly a fortnight, was made available on the same platform.

Frank’s latest offering runs 17 tracks long, and features contributions from Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce and more. In addition, at quickly-announced pop-up shops across the world, Frank’s Boys Don’t Cry magazine, which he announced back in 2015, was made available with more treats for fans, including a full contributor list and exclusive images, and an interesting McDonald’s-themed poem by Yeezy. Billboard‘s Steven Horowitz grabbed a few shots of the zine, which you can check out below.

Stream BLONDE here.

August 21, 2016