If Frank Ocean's Dad Suing Def Jam Reminded You of Anything, It Should be This

If Frank Ocean’s dad suing Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons reminded you of anything, it should be these two things:

1. His dad is still trying to cash in.
2. Frank Ocean has not yet released the album he promised for 2014.

It’s been just over two years since Ocean put out Channel Orange and it’s enough to have you scouring The Lonny Breaux Collection - which features around 50 unreleased R&B cuts - for frantic missed connections. These last two days, he’s appeared in the news twice, indirectly via his father and then directly via the appointment of a new team. It would be dumb to say this constitutes as seeding, but there are definitely movements at Camp Ocean.

Back in October last year, he posted on Tumblr that new material would arrive “when summer comes again.” So, it’s pretty late. In June, Ocean’s friend and collaborator Nabil Elderkin commented that: “Everyone should be excited about this new album — that shit is fire. He’s making a great record. It blows the sophomore album myth out of the water.” And all eyes looked expectedly to his summer show at Bonnaroo, but he didn’t play shred of anything new. That would piss most fans off, but - showing just how omnipresent and enduring a love he commands - the set was still heralded as a hypnotic masterpiece.

So, when is this Frank Ocean album going to drop and why hasn’t it yet? From the crystal clear facts to baseless conjecture, here’s what we know.

If anything is going to slow an album down, it’s firing your team. It’s unknown whether the two are linked, but less than three months after a proposed Chipotle commercial debacle that resulted in Ocean telling the spicy burrito barons to “fuck off”, he then sacked most of his team. He decided to part ways with Christian and Kelly Clancy, the well-publicised management duo who were responsible for the whole Odd Future collective, including Frank, from day one. Just yesterday, Billboard reported that Frank has now signed with Three Six Zero management, which suggests he might be gearing up for something. He ditched his press team Life or Death PR in exchange for the more polished celebrity experience of ID PR. This new team look after people who it’s hard to imagine ever didn’t exist, like Ben Stiller, Sean Penn and Dustin Hoffman, and it’s ran by CEO Kelly Bush. W Magazine once tried to include her in a piece about Hollywood’s most powerful lesbians, but she “declined to participate because they didn’t want to be featured in a sensationalistic out list about Hollywood’s power lesbians.”

In April this year, Ocean wrote on Tumblr: "I might skip on Coachella to stay in the groove and finish this bitch. I feel like they're finna wild out though. Fuck it. Bring the helicopter out." However, he later deleted it.

Ocean deleted his Twitter account ‘@Frank_Ocean’ last summer for unknown reasons that many assumed had something to do with concentrating on writing. The handle appeared again on Twitter recently, with no tweets, photo or bio yet associated with it, but by viewing the source you can see that it was re-created almost a month ago on Monday 18th August 2014.

The British photographer uploaded pictures of Frank Ocean in the studio about three months ago, with Frank purposefully shot holding one of the Abbey Road studios mugs. The notion of Frank recording in London correlates with him and Rick Rubin bizarrely turning up at a Kate Tempest show in Elephant & Castle in June. The likelihood of Mayren getting that access to Frank for a publication, but then releasing the images this early across Instagram, is unlikely. So, it suggests they are close, and that following Mayren on Instagram is a good shout for Ocean faithful.

So far, Tyler The Creator, Hit-Boy, Tame Impala, Rodney Jerkins, Rick Rubin, Happy Perez, King Krule, Charlie Gambetta, Danger Mouse, Pharrell Williams and Kevin Risto have all been mentioned as potential collaborators, suggesting the album could sound like anything from broken dream psychedelia to heart smelting R&B. In 2013, Frank told the BBC: “It's another cohesive thing bordering on a concept album again. At the end of Channel Orange there's 'Golden Girl' and I kind of want to extend that feeling into the next record.”

It’s standard for a songwriter to register unreleased tracks with a performing rights organisation out of caution, but a particularly large amount of Frank Ocean songs were registered with BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) and added to his 'unreleased songs' Wikipedia page last July. They came four months after he told BBC Radio that "I'm 10, 11 songs into this next thing" and weeks after he previewed three new tracks in Munich. The tracks registered have names like “Parachutes”, “Polaroid Embers” and “Richest Man in the Room”.

A pretty suspect London Twitter account called @8085 that describes itself as “A Break from Convention” leaked rumoured Frank Ocean artwork on August 13th. It didn’t seem real, but that didn’t stop it from racking up 2,267 retweets and 1,586 favourites and counting. His team haven’t confirmed or denied it, and it looks like this…

It’s hard to separate the dirt from the gold when it comes to the hints dropped on records this big, and the remainder of 2014 is starting to get roadblocked by late, big money albums like Adele, Rihanna, Prince, and Kanye. That said, Frank getting a new management team suggests something needs managing. One thing’s for sure with a new Frank Ocean album… There will be tears.

Follow Joe on Twitter: @Cide_Benengeli