Christopher Francis Ocean (born Christopher Edwin Breaux; October 28, 1987) is an American songwriter, rapper, and singer professionally known as Frank Ocean. Ocean has achieved cult-icon status through his enigmatic persona and idiosyncratic approach to pop. His moniker is said to be partially inspired by the 1960 film Ocean’s 11, starring crooner Frank Sinatra. In 2010, he filed to change his legal name to Christopher Francis Ocean, becoming official on April 23, 2015.

Ocean was born Christopher Edwin Breaux on October 28, 1987, in Long Beach, California, to parents Katonya Breaux Riley & Calvin Edward Cooksey. At five years old, his family relocated to the New Orleans area, in Marrero, Louisiana, on the west bank of the Mississippi River. In 2005, Ocean, then “Lonny” Breaux, graduated from John Ehret High School and enrolled in the University of New Orleans, majoring in English. His studies were immediately disrupted in August 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, destroying his home & personal recording studio, leading him to transfer to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Ocean briefly studied in Lafayette before dropping out to focus on his music career and relocating to Los Angeles, California.

In 2009, Ocean joined the hip-hop collective Odd Future. He began his career in the music industry by ghostwriting tracks for pop stars like Justin Bieber & Beyoncé, but eventually decided on a career change, stating in a 2012 BBC interview:

There was a point where I was composing for other people, and it might have been comfy to continue to do that and enjoy that income stream and the anonymity, but that’s not why I moved away from school and away from family.

He signed to Def Jam in 2010, but after they refused to let him release his intended debut album, he self-released the 2011 mixtape nostalgia,ULTRA. to critical acclaim. His follow-up 2012 studio album, channel ORANGE was released to both commercial & critical acclaim, achieving RIAA Gold certification on January 30, 2013, and winning him a GRAMMY for “Best Urban Contemporary Album” on February 10, 2013.

After a four-year hiatus from music & multiple equivocal posts made on his Tumblr, Ocean returned with his visual album Endless, beginning as a 24-hour live stream on his website, boysdontcry.co, in August 2016. The 46-minute music video follows Ocean building a spiral staircase in an empty warehouse. The abstract nature of Endless, and its fusion of electronica, trap, and R&B, make it Ocean’s most experimental release.

Merely 24 hours after the premiere of Endless, Ocean dropped the album Blonde alongside a 360-page magazine entitled Boys Don’t Cry. Ocean chose not to submit Blonde for consideration at the GRAMMY Awards, speaking with the New York Times in 2016:

[…] that institution certainly has nostalgic importance; it just doesn’t seem to be representing very well for people who come from where I come from and hold down what I hold down.

Blonde achieved RIAA Platinum certification on July 9, 2018.

Following the release of Endless & Blonde, Ocean broadcasted his first internet radio show on February 24, 2017, episode 001 of blonded RADIO, on Apple Music 1, the flagship internet radio station of Apple Music, where he debuts new music & remixes of previously released songs. He is currently releasing music through his independent record label, blonded, founded in 2017. In addition to blonded, Ocean revealed his entrepreneurial spirit beyond the music industry on August 6, 2021, unveiling his luxury company, Homer. The company offers high-end jewelry & accessories, available for purchase online and at the Homer store in New York City. On October 27, 2022, Ocean premiered his second internet radio show on Apple Music 1, Homer Radio. The hour-long program is described as “an office soundtrack” curated “from the desk of Frank Ocean.”

Ocean’s music, especially his releases post-channel ORANGE, can be characterized as futuristic, psychedelic soul. Ocean strayed away from the saturated sound that dominated pop during his four-year hiatus and, as a result, became regarded as one of the biggest influencers in R&B and pop today. His songs are met with praise due to his use of dense lyricism and elliptical songwriting over gently guided melodies. Blonde & Endless, especially, encapsulate Ocean’s versatility; his ease in bending genres demonstrates he is an artist with no boundaries.

Films & cars serve as inspiration for a large part of Ocean’s music. His musical influences range from Stevie Wonder to Outkast to The Smiths. In a 2016 tributary Tumblr post dedicated to the late R&B superstar Prince, Ocean revealed that his favorite song of all time is the 1980 single “When You Were Mine” from the album Dirty Mind.

Ocean is also notorious for his reticence and sporadic release of music. He shies away from the public eye and has done only 18 interviews his entire career, and live performances are a rarity. The only way fans could keep up with him was through his cryptic posts on Tumblr; however, in November 2018, Ocean made his private Instagram open to the public. In a 2019 interview with GQ, he spoke about the challenge of being an artist who values privacy:

I feel like there was dissonance between how I was seen by the audience and where I was actually. […] That dissonance—the word being a big container for how I was feeling… the way I was seen was not even close to correct. It’s still not correct, either. […] When you’re completely minimal with media, there’s a lot of pressure on whatever one thing you’re doing, the stakes are higher. Social media helps that, ‘cause you’re fully in control and can message that how you want.