Thinkin' About You and Pyramids are stellar songs, Sweet Life and Forrest Gump stuck with my cultural memory of the album...but the rest of it always felt a little half-baked to me. I was never enamored with Frank's songwriting style, though, most of his songs rub me that way. Aside from the money cuts Frank songs often give me the feeling of looking at a photograph that was intentionally taken while the camera was moving just a little bit. He doesn't have that 'effortless' feeling to me, but the sense of 'effort' I get from him isn't all that appetizing either.

(Scanning the album as I wrote this, I also recall digging Crack Rock a lot.)

I'll be happy to hear this album but I was right in the middle of my music critic side gig and I felt a little baffled by how universal the praise for Channel Orange was from all my peers. It was one of the only albums where I felt the consensus opinion on an album was a little overwhelming and undue; reading the think pieces now, I still find it VERY odd how many people find him to be some kind of luminary voice in R&B. He has a unique voice and in that genre that definitely counts for something but The Weeknd's first and third mixtapes were better full projects. In 2012 alone I preferred Jeremih's Late Nights mixtape that year, it didn't have a tentpole, decade-defining song like "Pyramids" but I felt it was more thorough front to back.


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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
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