When he’s not fetishizing his tires, K.R.I.T. Either way, it’s K.R.I.T.’s relationship with his own career that gives Return of 4Eva its poignancy. That may be legit it may be part of K.R.I.T.’s mythos. They’re not interested in someone aiming for a collection of songs rather than a monster single. He claims that rap labels aren’t interested in signing someone who’s just rapping about country shit. On Return of 4Eva, 25-year-old Mississippi native Big K.R.I.T.’s industry talk seeps out between the UGK-indebted tributes to wood grain that define his album. Rappers like Nicki Minaj and Kanye West use the music industry itself as a lyrical focus. Keys open doors… to your new career! But these days every rapper is his own label, accountant, and marketing department. Just like most rock bands’ second albums are secretly about the process of making a second album, raps about hustling on the corner are really raps about hustling to get into the studio. The truth is, coke rap was always a metaphor for the music industry. Everything here is a presentation of Ocean’s personality - from the videogame cartridge noise to the way he approaches sex, and how well it speaks to you has everything to do with how you respond to him. All of Nostalgia/Ultra takes what are essentially genre tropes that have been worn smooth and impersonal and make them personal to Ocean in ways that show how idiosyncratic an approach he can take without really changing up what an album like this should deliver. He sings his heart out, and it hurts, and not in the way that these kind of songs ever hurt to listen to. On “There Will Be Tears”, Ocean gives us the heartbreaking ballad, but instead of being lovesick for a girl he sings about growing up without a father and losing his grandfather. A pretty rote love song is bookended with a monologue from Eyes Wide Shut, seemingly tearing into the misogyny of the track itself. “Songs For Women” playfully navigates the before and after of becoming a songwriter to get with girls, and what it feels like when the one girl isn’t interested. “We All Try” positions Ocean’s relationship with his girl by laying out his entire belief system. “Novacane” draws a parallel between a need to be numb and the current studio-frankensteined style of his genre, but still manages to walk us through a pretty specific story in a way you only see in golden age rap and singer-songwriter deep cuts. Subject matter, this is as much about sex and relationships as the Jodeci he takes a swipe at in one of the interstitials, but there is a breadth of language and approach to subject matter on this record that makes Nostalgia/Ultra different. In a year where R&B had an out-of-nowhere renaissance, between mainstream radio and weirdo online only releases (seriously, it may not be the best album but The Dream’s “Wedding Crasher” is probably my most-played track of the year), Frank Ocean managed to not have any competition in great songwriting (or in a few cases rewriting other people’s eh songs as great songs, fudging the “your favorite hip hop/r&b artist’s taste in rock is about the same as your mom’s” rule by making a Coldplay track pretty listenable).
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