This is part of Creative Loafing Tampa's new issue, The Year In Music. See and listen to the rest of our top albums here.
Frank Ocean, Blonde (Self-Released) Did I carry a $10 iTunes gift card in my wallet for more than a year, making sure that I would be ready when Frank finally decided to drop his follow-up to 2012’s Channel Orange? Why yes — yes, I did. Up until the morning it came out I thought it was going to be titled Boys Don’t Cry, but hey, a “Code Blonde” emergency sounds funnier anyway. After four years of not-so-patiently waiting, we got a weighty magazine (actually titled Boys Don’t Cry), a visual album (Endless, Ocean’s last album for Def Jam) and an LP (Blonde) within a couple hours of each other, proving that no one lives up to the hype like Frank. —Abram Scharf
This article appears in Dec 15-22, 2016.