Images via Frank Ocean/Rosalía //
Frank Ocean has copped a bit of flack lately with his controversial Coachella appearance during Weekend 1 and subsequent cancellation of his follow-up performance on Weekend 2 (leaving Blink-182 to pick up the pieces).
Now, in recent days, what claims to be a series of leaks from the rapper have been surfacing on the internet. While two of the tracks – ‘Steer It’ and ‘The Line’ – have been discredited as AI by hardworking Reddit sleuths, another track ‘These Days’ is yet to be confirmed.
Frank Ocean – Changes ft Rosalía (2020) ❤️🔥 pic.twitter.com/t8HluDs8uu
— Frank Ocean Online (@BlondedOnline) May 2, 2023
However, the most interesting leak is a song and video by the name of ‘Changes’, which appears to be a very real collaboration between Frank Ocean and Rosalía.
While both the audio and video are extremely low quality, with the song fairly muffled and the video experiencing frequent glitches, it’s enough to make out both the singers clear as day (almost), alongside some cameos from ASAP Rocky and Slowthai. Fans have since proceeded to upscale certain screengrabs from the video.
Frank Ocean & Rosalia – Changes pic.twitter.com/TbMpnzaw3j
— HiddenPosters® (@hiddenposters) May 2, 2023
The song itself is a fairly minimal acoustic guitar-driven number featuring a driving beat and a melodic bassline. While it’s hard to get a real sense of it due to the audio quality, it sounds like it would well and truly feed all the starved Frank Ocean fans that have been waiting for a new release from the rapper for so long.
Meanwhile, the video looks like it could be a low-key visual masterpiece, filled with bursting vivid colour palettes and some iconic fashion moments, in a very similar vein to the clip for ‘Nikes’, which is currently Frank Ocean’s only music video. It’s also extremely wholesome, with some very cute cuts of Frank and Rosalía just laughing and hugging.
meu novo lugar favorito rosalía x frank ocean 🥹🫶🏾 pic.twitter.com/PS0ndDKAVn
— 𝖌𝖆𝖓𝖏𝖆 (@ganjadragun) May 2, 2023
In her 2022, i-D cover story, Rosalía actually mentioned having been in the studio with Frank when working on her latest record MOTOMAMI, so it really all checks out.
Let’s just hope this leak doesn’t deter the release at all, because if this is anything to go by, it looks like Frank might well and truly be gearing up to put down that cock ring welder and pick the microphone back up.
You can watch the leak for yourself here.