As some of you may know, I am a huge Frank Ocean fan. Ever since the release of  his mixtape nostalgia, ULTRA, I have been keeping track of every song he releases up to yesterday, when he finally announced the release of his debut album with Def Jam titled Channel Orange due on July 17th 2012.

Along with the date and title, Ocean posted tour dates as well on his personal Tumblr, these are the stops of the tour:

7/13 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox at The Market
7/14 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
7/16 – San Francisco, CA @ The Regency Ballroom
7/17 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern
7/19 – Austin, TX @ La Zona Rosa
7/20 – Dallas, TX @ Southside Music Hall
7/22 – Atlanta, GA @ Center Stage
7/23 – Washington, DC @ Nightclub 9:30
7/25 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
7/26 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5
7/28 – Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
7/29 – Montreal, QC @ Club Soda
7/31 – Toronto, ON @ The Guvernment
8/1 – Detroit, MI @ TBA

And this Frank Ocean frenzy did not stop here, he also posted a teaser trailer of Channel Orange. The song featured in the trailer, “Pyramids” was later released for free by Ocean too.

If “Pyramids” is a preview of what’s to come in Channel Orange, color me excited. The first half of the song features Ocean with his usual R&B vocals yet, doing this over an electronic beat, and as the song progresses, he isn’t talking about Cleopatra in Egypt anymore, he’s not singing, but rapping, about a girl that is “working at the Pyramid tonight“, a girl that he has to pay so she can love him.

Usually when someone releases a 9 minute song, people tend to get bored and usually artists put some interlude in the song that could make almost anyone skip to the part where they start singing. However, Frank Ocean is the type of artist that is versatile enough to blend in both R&B in one half of the song, and then turn it into hip-hop, and the magic happens when you don’t notice the transition so abruptly, you actually enjoy moving from one story to the other within the same song. This to me, is what proves me that Frank Ocean is the real deal, and one of the best when it comes to upcoming singers/rappers.

What do you think so far about Channel Orange?