Hear Me Out: Frank Ocean, Migos, and Calvin Harris, ‘Slide’

Like many overzealous Frank Ocean fans, I was a bit ruffled when I heard that the artist was teaming up with Calvin Harris and Migos for a single. The news felt like hearing your capital-A Artsy friend tell you that they just landed a job writing for the Arts section of the Wall Street Journal—your knee-jerk response, knowing their maverick values, is to tell them to get as far, far away as they can. So I wondered: What peculiar misery could acquaint the man who protested the Grammy Awards in his self-described “Kaepernick moment” with such strange, commercial bedfellows?

As I listen to “Slide” more and more, I am starting to think that the key to unlocking the mystery might be in a lesser-known cut from Ocean’s discography: “U-N-I-T-Y” from the visual album “Endless.” The song doubles as a showcase of Ocean’s quick-witted lyricism (catch it in the line “Silicon Valley, new venture is tits up,” where Ocean relies on imagery to analogize the artificiality of plastic surgery to startup culture) and a nod to the pared-down, woozy instrumentals that Tyler, The Creator might have cooked up during the heyday of Odd Future. On “U-N-I-T-Y,” Ocean rhymes about drawing contact with artists who are “tryna go pop” and dares them to “rip [his] facemask.” Pop, to the extent that the word is more than just a blanket term for what is trending, might be Ocean’s facemask: a pliable costume Ocean wears in order to evert the familiar.

“Slide” contains the essential ingredients of a pop confection. Its title, a slang term for sex without strings attached, speaks to the currency of our contemporary homosocial bragging economy: “How many girls slide in your DMs, bro?” Its sun-soaked production, anchored by EDM favorite Calvin Harris, lies somewhere between the slinky revivalist funk of Bruno Mars and the throbbing house music Harris is known for. Quavo and Offset, two-thirds of your local fraternity’s favorite hip hop trio, trumpet diamond-adorned masculine fantasia: dabbing, making millions, smoking, and having sex with women attractive enough to be on “The Bachelor.” Frank Ocean, a name no fan of music can ignore, emerges from the emotional mist of piano that kicks off the song, chirping a tired trope about emptying his bank account.

At least, it sure seems he is. Not long after the single’s release, Ocean strayed from his quiet public persona to shed light on the meaning of his pitch-shifted lyrics. Apparently, they do refer to emptying Ocean’s bank account, but only to purchase a work of art: Pablo Picasso’s “Garçon à la pipe.” No need to project a critic’s stuffy interpretation about how Ocean is emphasizing the material value of art in the age of streaming; I am of the belief that Ocean embarked on this project because he wanted to let some air in, and he certainly deserves to after “Blond(e).” There is, however, a compelling yin-yang relationship between Ocean’s delivery and verse and Quavo’s and Offset’s verses. As the latter two swear by the glimmer of their diamonds, Ocean uses his jewelry to document a relationship marked by physical proximity but emotional distance (“Wrist on a wrist, a link of charms, yeah / Laying, we’re still a link apart”). Throughout the song, Ocean’s voice frays into a deadpan, suggesting a fatigue that becomes visible when one “put[s] some spotlight on the slide.” Ocean’s ambivalence elevates what would otherwise be a safe summer jam to the status of a timely cultural artifact: He holds up a mirror to the feeling of waking up in an exceptionally warm late February and wanting to bask in the sun but being too weighed down by the erosion of sustainable climatic conditions and a heedless administration to truly rest. The song’s most defiant line (“If we could see in twenty twin / Twice we could see it ’til the end”) weds the personal and the political, as Ocean could be expressing a desire for emotional clarity (20/20) in a bejeweled relationship or for survival in the Trump era (can we hold our breath until 2020?).

Such is the multicolored, breezy beauty of “Slide”—not that it skewers the life of excess that big pop panders to, but that it refuses a one-dimensional attitude toward it. It preserves both the luster and the languor of a lavish, lascivious life, and—when it sounds this good—why not slide through?