14 DAY TRIAL // Frank Ocean is gay. The singer, a Kanye West and Jay-Z collaborator, part of the group Odd Future, has just come out in a beautifully-worded open letter on his Tumblr page, thus becoming the first star from the hip hop community to do so.
The rap and hip hop community is known for a certain intolerance to the gay and bi, which makes Ocean's gesture all the braver, word online has it.
Either way, right now, he's not thinking about the impact his coming out will have but rather about the sense of complete freedom he's experiencing.
“4 summers ago, I met somebody. I was 19 years old. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer after, together. Everyday almost. And on the days we were together, time would glide. Most of the day I'd see him, and his smile. I'd hear his conversation and his silence... until it was time to sleep,” Ocean writes.
“By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant. It was hopeless. There was no escaping, no negotiating with the feeling. No choice. It was my first love, it changed my life,” he adds.
However, he's been with women too and, until that moment when he realized he was in love with a man, he'd thought he'd known love or at least infatuation with them.
This particular love story was never meant to be, the star explains, because his friend did not reciprocate his feelings. He did, however, support him as a friend would.
Since then, Ocean has been fighting to keep this secret and, he writes, maintain his sanity.
“I took the breaths and carried on. I kept up a peculiar friendship with him because I couldn't imagine keeping up my life without him. I struggled to master myself and my emotions. I wasn't always successful,” he says.
He ends his letter with a thank you to his mother, who helped him through this.
“Thanks. To my mother, you raised me strong. I know I'm only brave because you were first ... so thank you. All of you. For everything good. I feel like a free man. If I listen closely... I can hear the sky falling too,” Ocean writes.
Reactions to his coming out have been mostly supportive, with both fans and industry people reaching out to him to support and praise him for his decision to braving criticism to be “free.”
Here is Frank Ocean's message in full.