Frank Ocean – Thinkin Bout You

Frank Ocean’s video for the leading single from his debut album channel ORANGE [1] is a masterpiece and a puzzle. Thinkin Bout You is a song that yearns for forever with the one you love. The video paints this message in so much metaphor that some people may have missed its elegant poetry.

Directed by the visual art team of High5Collective, the video is set in two parallel but separate epochs of time. It opens up in what we can assume is the past. A man is carrying a young woman (his daughter, perhaps) to a native witch doctor. Upon arrival, the doctor, whose pupils are iced over in spiritual dilation, passes his energy on to the man and reveals the location of an interstellar “cure.”

Meanwhile, in the present, Ocean plays a stay at home nurse, easing the weary soul of a child as he watches his sister slip further and further into an eternal oblivion.

If you pay attention, you’ll note how the lyrics and the video are on a similar wavelength, albeit dripping with metaphor. For instance, the main question — Or do you not think so far ahead? ‘Cause I’ve been thinkin’ bout forever. As the two times overlap, we see that in one era the woman survives, while the other continues to deteriorate. She can only think about the next moment, her next breath. But her father/brother is thinking about spending forever.

So much depth and heartache in a seemingly abstract — borderline nonsense — MV.

Ocean’s channel ORANGE was released 10 July and is available on iTunes.

You can see more of the High5Collective’s work at their website.