Frank Ocean doesn’t do a lot of interviews. In general, he seems to be a private person, although he opened up some last year when he decided to make his Instagram account public. He did just do a new interview with GQ, though, and in it, he talked about why he let his fans into his Instagram. Ocean said that he did it because there is a “dissonance” between how he is perceived and how he really is, so he wanted more control over his public image:
“I feel like there was dissonance between how I was seen by the audience and where I was actually, so that contributed to the decision to make my Instagram public, for sure. But there’s also the idea of dialogue and discourse and conversation — like theater where the audience can interrupt you versus the television.”
He was then asked about the misconceptions people may have about him, and he said that when an artist tends to stay out of the spotlight (such as himself), that puts “a lot of pressure on whatever one thing you’re doing”:
“I feel like between the numbers of zero to ten, in between every number there’s infinity, you know? I would describe a person as the space between the symbols, beyond the language. That dissonance — the word being a big container for what I was feeling… the way I was seen was not even close to correct. It’s still not correct, either.
With some pop stars, the idea of them is maybe more balanced or fully formed: a half-dozen magazine covers, x amount of interviews, a daily influx of media. There’s a way you wanna be in the visual press, although you could potentially be misrepresented; when you’re completely minimal with media, there’s a lot of pressure on whatever one thing you’re doing, the stakes are higher. Social media helps that, ’cause you’re fully in control and can message that how you want.”
Read the full interview here.
