Singer-songwriter James Blake has worked with quite a few hip-hop and R&B titans and he still thinks that Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange follow-up is well worth the wait.
Blake, who was interviewed by Pitchfork to promote his new album The Colour In Anything, spoke on working with Ocean on his long-gestating album and how it inspired Blake to create his latest work. Blake said that making tracks with Ocean is what opened him up to collaborating more on his third studio album.
“When I was working on some of his music early on, there was this chord progression I didn’t like in something that we were making, and I had an idea. A producer was in the room when I was coming up with it, and he was like, ‘Nah, I think the chords are fine.’ I was like, ‘No, no.’ Then he basically said, ‘This is Frank’s music.’ And that’s exactly what I hadn’t learned by working on my own all these years…to let go.
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Learning from that made me want to work with other people on my own projects.”
The world at large is starved for any word on new Frank Ocean music, so Pitchfork did their duty and pushed Blake to say more about the album. Blake said that the album may have changed since he worked on it, but what he heard was worth the years that fans have spent waiting.
“He is onto something, he really is,” Blake said.
Blake has worked with Chance The Rapper, Drake, and was recently featured on Beyoncé’s world-dominating album Lemonade. But there’s one collaboration he couldn’t seem to nail down, making a song with Kanye West. While he’s worked with ‘Ye before, Blake says he couldn’t make a Yeezy duet a reality on Colour.
“Something was supposed to happen; I don’t really know how to describe how that didn’t work out,” he said. “I wanted Kanye to be on the song “Timeless,” but the verse didn’t materialize.”
Check out the whole interview over at Pitchfork.
