Ciara reflects on knowing Frank Ocean before his rise to art-forward superstardom in a new interview with Complex News.
In the interview, available in full below, Ciara was asked about her initial introduction to Ocean, which she credits, in part, to Tricky Stewart. As fans are well aware, Ciara was among the earliest to show Ocean support.
“I never told this but Tricky gave me a disc of his music because he was so excited about him,” Ciara recalled. “And obviously he had introduced us to each other and we would hang all the time, super cool. I had his CD. … I would ride in the car and jam out to it.”
Per Ciara, Tricky urged her not to play the music for anyone else, though she admittedly ignored that suggestion whenever given the chance.
“I would play it for everybody,” she said. “I’d be like, ‘This artist is gonna be the next big thing. He’s so dope.’ I knew it. I knew it when I heard the records and I just believed in him.”
Back then, Ciara further recalled, Ocean was also “super excited about his boys,” i.e. Tyler, The Creator and the larger Odd Future collective.
“I knew he was special,” Ciara said of her memories of Ocean at the time.
With 2011’s inaugural Nostalgia, Ultra mixtape, Ocean, who’s soon set to make his directorial debut with a film starring David Jonsson, laid the groundwork for what has no doubt grown into one of the most fascinatingly uncompromising artistic journeys in recent memory. Channel Orange, Endless, and Blonde followed, as did Grammys and the shrewd development of a level of unbreakable mystique rarely afforded to artists of his time.
There is at least some precedent, however. As Oscar-nominated actor Timothée Chalamet said last year while promoting his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Ocean and Dylan are in the same class of artists whose “elusive nature” has somehow sustained despite their notoriety.
“When people in pop culture are able to break through and then retain a quality of themselves—like Frank Ocean today does the same thing, I think—then it’s like, you gotta revere these people in my opinion,” Chalamet told Stephen Colbert back in December. “Because they figured it out. You know, if you’re sensitive enough to be great and then you’re smart enough to protect it.”
It’s unclear when, exactly, fans can expect new music from Ocean. Blonde, his most recent studio album, arrived to universal acclaim back in 2016 and remains a conversational touchpoint to this day. His aforementioned film, a title for which hasn’t been publicly confirmed, was reported to be in production as of January of this year.
As for Ciara, she rolled out her CiCi album this month, saying in a note to fans when first revealing its cover that this project was intended to serve as both a “love letter” to, and “a celebration” of, the path she finds herself on these days.
“Truth is, this season of life has been about forging my own path and tapping deeper into my inner drive,” she told fans in May. “No label, no limits—just full-on freedom and faith. It’s been a journey of unlearning, rebuilding, and reclaiming what success looks like on my own terms. Grown, seasoned, still got the moves—and somehow just getting started. This project took 5 years to build, and every beat, every lyric, every moment was made with intention—to lift you, to move you, to make you feel something.”
Below, catch Ciara's full Complex News conversation.
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