Jul 8, 2017 - Lil Duval Recruits Teyana Taylor to Direct Fun-Filled 'Pull Up' Video Featuring. Frank Ocean performs during the 2014 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival on. In the Wild” isn't enough Frank's song to crack this early career canon. Flashy names (something that ruins some albums) but that's not what made.

With 'Channel Orange' turning five on July 10, we pick the 10 best Frank Ocean songs, including 'Thinking Bout You,' 'Slide,' 'Chanel,' and 'Pink + White.' In five years, has gone from releasing his proper debut album to proving the flimsy absurdity of the words “proper debut album.” Just last year, his profound insight into music consumption finessed him from an unhappy record deal into. But four years before Blonde intensified his cultural and critical dominance (as well as his bank account), Frank was just an up-and-comer. Channel Orange was released five years ago Monday (July 10) and before its arrival, a mixtape and handful of features to Ocean's name.

It’s crazy to think there was once a time he was saddled with descriptors like “Odd Future crooner Frank Ocean.” In the years since, he’s welcomed us into one of music's most sensitive psyches and delivered on the promise of an artist whose early-career feature bested both ’s andum’s on and 's collaborative mega-flex, Watch the Throne. In the end, we decided “No Church in the Wild” isn't enough Frank's song to crack this early career canon, though certainly not out of failing to go hard enough. Parsing through less than a decade of material to come up with the top 10 Frank Ocean songs was no easy task. Ebs yazlm cracked screen.

10. Frank Ocean - 'Nature Feels' (from Nostalgia, Ultra, 2011) Following the note on 'No Church,' there's no doubt Frank owes a heavy debt here, too, building this mixtape track largely from 'Electric Feel's' slithering disco bass. But have scarcely sounded this good since 2007's Oracular Spectacular, and they absolutely never sounded this provocative. Lyrically, Ocean cuts to the core, managing to sexualize photosynthesis ('I've been meaning to f--- you in the garden / Been breathing so hard we both could use the oxygen') and link it to mankind's most primal (also garden-related) instincts ('Feeling like Adam when he first found out this existed.'

Frank Ocean - 'Ivy' (from Blonde, 2016) Frank f---s with some indie rock. From Nostalgia, Ultra’s “What’s a Radiohead?” mini-sketch to naming his label Boys Don’t Cry, he’s got an appreciation for heady guitar work, which he employs on Blonde’s second track. The chiming, palm-muted guitar line -- written by former member Rostam Batmanglij -- nestles a glistening, percussion-free environment for Ocean to come clean over lost love, this time as the heartbreaker. Frank Ocean - 'Bad Religion' (from Channel Orange, 2013) This Channel Orange side D gem is closely intertwined with Ocean's coming out as bisexual on the eve of the album's release, and a thematic link to another sparse confessional on the double album's opening side (more on that later). A lovelorn Ocean confides in his taxi driver and, upon receiving only religious platitudes, realizes begging kinda sucks, whether it's to God or a would-be partner: 'If it brings me to my knees, it's a bad religion.'

After careening between falsetto and plain-sung pleas for most of the song, the -like scream he squeezes into the denouement is one of Channel Orange's signature moments. Frank Ocean - 'Pyramids' (from Channel Orange, 2013) This 10-minute wonder towers over the middle of Channel Orange and for good reason: it’s like a whole album within an album, thematically and musically. It opens as a banger, then shifts from clubby grandeur to druggy and downtempo, soundtracking Ocean’s cross-millennia Black narrative. His Cleopatra character is all-powerful in ancient Egypt, then, once the song shifts to present, becomes a stripper just as crestfallen as her client. On a lighter side, we’ll always have Ocean’s “Pyramids” SNL performance; after wrapping up his singing duties, he shuffles cross-stage to play some video games while his pal (and album collaborator) John Mayer continues to shred.

Frank Ocean - 'Slide' (from Calvin Harris' Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1, 2017) Sure, Ocean isn’t the lead artist, but does anyone really think of “Slide” as a song? The DJ-producer’s sun-kissed disco grooves give our hero the closest thing he’s had to a summer jam, and at that, his biggest Top 40 hit to date (it peaked at No. 9 on Billboard’s ). There’s also uncanny chemistry between collaborators. Ocean muses emptying his bank account to buy a Picasso in the intro; he doesn’t mention the painter, but Offset drops the name in his guest verse. Frank Ocean - 'Thinkin Bout You' (from Channel Orange, 2013) Anyone still mulling over Ocean's needs to go back and watch his real defining TV moment, the uncanny 'Thinkin Bout You' rendition, a video clinic on how to pivot your voice from painspoken to falsetto on a dime.