Frank Ocean releases long awaited new album, Blond

The singer's follow-up to 2012's Channel Orange was released exclusively on Apple Music and in pop-up shops.

Frank Ocean released his long-awaited new album, called Blond.

The 17-track collection was released exclusively on Apple Music on Saturday night (August 21). Fans in London, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles could also pick up physical copies of the album at pop-up shops.

In stores, the physical album was reportedly being handed out for free and came packaged with a Frank Ocean-edited, 360-page glossy magazine called Boys Don’t Cry, which was expected to be the title of the record itself.

Blonde artwork

The magazine includes photographs taken by Frank, an interview with his mother, horoscopes and the lyrics of a rap called The MacDonalds Man written by Kanye West.

Some have reported that the physical copy has a slightly different tracklisting to the version on Apple Music, and there is also confusion around the album's title - listed as Blonde on Apple Music but spelt as Blond on the artwork. The sleeve shows a green-haired Frank photographed last year by the Turner prize-winning artist Wolfgang Tillmans.

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— steven j. horowitz (@speriod) August 20, 2016

As well as Kanye, collaborators on Blond include Beyonce, Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, and even David Bowie and the Beatles.

Speculation around the release of Frank's follow-up to 2012's Channel Orange started earlier this month, when he posted a video of himself online chopping up wood to clips of music. On Friday (August 19) he then released am 18-track 'visual album' called Endless.

On Saturday morning (August 20) before the album's release, he released what was to be Blond's first single, called Nikes. The song pays tribute to Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old high school student shot by George Zimmerman. Watch the accompanying music video below.