In a rare interview, Frank Ocean has spoken to GQ about a variety of topics ranging from political responsibilities to his advocacy of night moisturizer. He touches on the reasons he made his Instagram account public and his philosophy of cover versions, discussing his takes on Coldplay, Aaliyah, and others. He also speaks about his recent move to New York, starting with the acquisition of a luxury mattress recommended by Spike Jonze. His blonded Radio co-hosts Vegyn and Emmett Cruddas conducted the interview.
Asked about interacting with politics last year, via his “blonded Midterms” radio show, Ocean said, “The stakes feel higher now, yes. I was excited about the idea of incentivizing people to vote and to get excited about midterms, because people aren’t usually excited about voting at midterms. Getting seven or eight thousand people who might not have otherwise voted to participate like that is a testament to what public figures can do or encourage with their voice. It feels responsible, especially at this time…. It was a success when I look at it—it felt like something I’d like to continue doing.”
He also concedes that, having quit drinking after a bad mezcal experience, his vice is watching “way too much TV news. I know that I’m not getting real information, but I still watch it. I wish my vice was VH1 reality-TV shows, but it’s not—it’s MSNBC. MSNBC is Love & Hip Hop with better vocabulary and more range, but it’s the same thing. Very much entertainment.”
Ocean goes on to advise hapless men of effective skincare, focussing on “night cream. I feel like men just go to sleep. They may wash their face or they don’t even bother—they go to sleep with the day face on. You really need to do a gentle wash and put a night moisturizer on. You can’t have the retinol in your creams in the day because it makes you more sun-sensitive, so you wanna throw that on at night. I need the night cream because when I wake up I feel very beautiful, moisturized and ready to have people making eye contact with me, ready to look above my eyebrow, below the eyebrow. [laughs]”
Referring to Pharrell’s coveted and highly secretive skincare routine, he jokes, “It’s been all these years, and Pharrell still hasn’t given us the keys yet. He just says ‘exfoliate,’ but it’s not just ‘exfoliate’: We need more keys.”
Of his public Instagram, Ocean says that, due to his limited media presence, he felt a “dissonance between how I was seen by the audience and where I was actually.” He adds, “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.” Read the full interview at GQ.
