Frank Ocean is having none of it. When producer Ken Ehrlich and writer David Wild speculated that perhaps the reason Ocean was not submitting Blonde for Grammy consideration is because of his “faulty” 2013 performance, Ocean hit back in a scathing Tumblr post.
“Winning a TV award doesn’t christen me successful,” Ocean wrote.
“Yea yea my 2013 performance at the Grammys was absolute sh*t. Technical difficulties, blah blah,” Ocean went on. “F**k that performance though. You think that’s why I kept my work out of the Grammy process this year? Don’t you think I would’ve wanted to play the show to ‘redeem’ myself if I felt that way?”
He wrote in the post that he had considered being a part of the planned Prince tribute “but then I figured my best tribute to that man’s legacy would be to continue to be myself out here and to be successful.”
Ocean also talked about how the Grammy’s are out of touch, citing last year’s Album of the Year contest between Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar.
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“I’ve actually been tuning into CBS around this time of year for a while to see who gets the top honor and you know what’s really not ‘great TV’ guys? 1989 getting album of the year over To Pimp A Butterfly,” he said. “Hands down one of the most ‘faulty’ TV moments I’ve seen.”
He went on to say, “Believe the people. Believe the ones who’d rather watch select performances from your program on YouTube the day after because your show puts them to sleep. Use the old gramophone to actually listen bro, I’m one of the best alive.”
Wild and Ehrlich talked about Ocean’s “Forrest Gump” performance in 2013 while accusing him of being too “rigid” in his ideas.
“Frank had a very definite idea of exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it,” Wild said. “Ken said, that’s not great TV, and what he’s taught all of us is, ‘We’re not putting on a radio show … you have to make it a TV moment.’ And he knew from the start that that was not one of those moments.”