Frank Ocean

It’s not just that he’s an enigma or that he follows his own clock.

It’s not even his style (which seems invincible), or the fact that he’s one of the few pop artists publicly navigating the frontiers of queer identity.

It’s that Frank Ocean is one of those songwriters who manages to touch new and distant places in his audience’s imagination, a cartographer of intimacy and confession so intrepid and sensitive that listening to him can feel like eavesdropping on something private, maybe even inexpressible.