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This would eventually become the visual component of another new album, Endless, which Ocean released to fulfill his Def Jam contract as the final step in a "seven-year chess game" Ocean enacted to part ways with the label, which has been said to have finessed the label out of tens of millions of dollars. (Seriously even Adele complained.) However, several weeks prior, a cryptic livestream began that showed Ocean building a staircase in a warehouse with new instrumentals playing in the background. While Ocean confirmed in 2013 that work had begun on his follow-up album, it would take until the end of summer 2016 for said album - Blonde, originally titled Boys Don't Cry - to release after one of the most infamous and widely publicized album delays of its time.
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The end result, nostalgia, ULTRA., was self-released in 2011 to critical acclaim, earning Ocean fans and future collaborators in high places (namely Kanye West, and through him Beyoncé and Jay-Z). The same year, he signed a writing contract with Def Jam, but ended up feeling neglected by the label, to which he began work on an independent mixtape. Adopting the name Frank Ocean (believed to have been inspired by the original Ocean's Eleven film, in which Frank Sinatra, a muse of his, plays Danny Ocean), he joined the Odd Future music collective after meeting them in 2009. He eventually decided that the job, while comfortable, wasn't what he wanted to do forever.
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He first took an interest in music from a young age and planned to study English at college in his hometown of New Orleans however, the fallout of Hurricane Katrina led to him dropping out to pursue music, and eventually establishing himself as a songwriter in Los Angeles under the name Lonny Breaux. His music is typically categorized as R&B but covers a wide range of styles and influences, and he is considered one of the leading artists in the alternative slant of the genre that struck out in the 2010s, distinguished for his musical style, elliptical songwriting, and wide vocal range. Frank Ocean (born Christopher Edwin Cooksey, later Breaux, on Octoin New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American singer-songwriter, rapper and producer.