Frank Ocean: Oh No He Didn't!

The Independent.

Ridiculous.
He's never yet said publicly he's gay, just that he once had a relationship with a man.
Most of the songs on Channel Orange are clearly about women.
This really is the most ridiculous tokenistic twaddle.
Part of a tradition I call "The Whitey Album", where a record by a black artist gets fetishised and hyped by white journalists and is played at middle-class dinner parties by people desperate to show how street they are - and now this comes with added "gay"!
See also Public Enemy, De La Soul, Arrested Development, Wu Tang Tribe, Lauryn Hill etc etc...

Update: Rosie Swash on Guardian Music asks if 2012 was the year hip hop's attitudes to homosexuality changed - though she points out Ocean didn't say he was gay, and isn't really hip-hop...

Update 2: And once again Gay Star News show why they are the shittest and thickest gay media outlet in the world.

Frank Ocean: Happy 25th Birthday

Best wishes and the best of luck to you, Frank.
This happy occasion might be a good opportunity to revisit a few points about what became one of the most discussed music stories of the year.
Frank Ocean has never described himself as gay, or as a gay man.
Most of the songs on Channel Orange are clearly about women.
The song Forrest Gump is about falling in love with a man, and he says it's autobiographical.
But he's also said the relationship it describes - "my first love" - is in the past, and suggests it was a one-off (Read his Tumblr post on this here).
As far as I know he's only spoken about the "coming out" circus this gave rise to in one interview (in the UK press, at any rate), with The Guardian Guide. 
Much of the gay media were very excited about all this, though many seemed not to have listened to the album, or to what he's actually said.
The Advocate, America's biggest gay magazine, put him on the cover.
But, perhaps tellingly, Frank didn't give them an interview.
I'm not a mind-reader, and nor do I know him, so I have no way of knowing if Frank Ocean is actually gay (though it would be odd for him to be so candid and then write a load of love songs using the female pronoun).
But I also can't see any reason to try and shoehorn him into an identity that he doesn't use himself.

Update: Independent article on two gay club nights that play Hip Hop, It's A Hard Cock Life and Pac-Man.
Mentions Frank Ocean's "coming out", natch.
Try and guess which leading authority on Hip Hop they ask about it... Peter Tatchell!
Inspired journalism.