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Nostalgia, Ultra (stylized as nostalgia,ULTRA. and occasionally nostalgia/ultra) is the debut mixtape by American recording artist Frank Ocean. It was released on February 16, 2011. Ocean was inspired to make the mixtape, after Hurricane Katrina in his native New Orleans and his subsequent relocation to Los Angeles. After joining alternative hip hop group Odd Future in 2010, he self-released the mixtape, without initial promotion. Nostalgia, Ultra has a unique R&B aesthetic and features surreal themes and nostalgic lyrics. The songs mostly focus on interpersonal relationships, personal reflection, and social commentary. Following its release, the mixtape received rave reviews from music critics. The cover features a picture of a bright orange 1980s BMW E30 M3, Ocean's 'dream car', in plain sight amidst lush greenery.
In May 2011, Def Jam announced its plans to release the mixtape as an EP on July 26, 2011. However, the release of the EP was indefinitely delayed in July 2011 and has since been cancelled. Two singles were released from the aborted EP version: 'Novacane', and 'Swim Good'. Both songs received music videos directed by Australian director Nabil Elderkin. Ocean embarked on a solo concert tour through North America and Europe to promote the record, playing a total of 7 shows. In addition, his 2012 performance at the Coachella Music Festival included several live renditions from the release including 'Strawberry Swing' and 'LoveCrimes'.
The mixtape appeared on several music critics' and publications' end-of-year albums lists. Controversy arose in March 2012 over the song 'American Wedding', a remake of the song 'Hotel California' by American rock band Eagles. Recording artist Kanye West was reportedly a fan of the mixtape, which led to Ocean appearing on the album Watch the Throne. Subsequently, Ocean collaborated with artists Beyoncé Knowles and Jay-Z after they were introduced to the mixtape through West. Following its release, both Ocean and the mixtape have developed a cult following. The mixtape was followed by the release of Ocean's debut album Channel Orange to similar critical acclaim in 2012.
Frank Ocean was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He made the decision to pursue a career in music at a young age, and as a teen, he did neighborhood chores to fund his early studio sessions. After Hurricane Katrina hit his hometown of New Orleans, Ocean moved to Los Angeles to pursue a recording career. He initially had problems maintaining a career while juggling a job, due to spending too much time in the recording studios, making him late for his jobs. He began to write songs and he sold them to other recording artists; selling his first song to Noel Gourdin at the age of 19. Discussing as to why he chose to write songs, Ocean commented that 'I feel at a higher level of consciousness when I'm being creative.'
Eventually, he landed songwriting gigs for established artists like John Legend and Justin Bieber where he made substantially more money. In late 2009, he met producer Tricky Stewart, who helped Ocean sign a contract with Def Jam Recordings as a solo artist. However, he was initially unable to build a relationship with the company. In protest, Ocean joined the rap collective Odd Future which introduced him to artists such as Tyler, The Creator and Hodgy Beats. His debut song was 'SteamRoller' on the Domo Genesis album Rolling Papers. Ocean garnered acclaim and generated interest while in the group, and Rolling Stone magazine's Jonah Weiner called him a 'gifted avant-R&B smoothie'. During his time with the group he recorded and self-released Nostalgia, Ultra without any pre-release promotion on his Tumblr account.
The mixtape samples songs from Radiohead, Coldplay, MGMT, Mr. Hudson and The Eagles, which Ocean sings over. Ocean, when uploading the album to iTunes, labeled it as bluegrass and death metal, out of arbitrariness. When asked about why he uploaded the songs in that way, he replied; 'I don't want to seem like I have a cause against genres, or maybe I do.. Bluegrass is swag. Bluegrass is all the way swag.' Ocean described the making of his mixtape as a labor of love, stating that 'It was like difficult to make. Not like writing the songs [or] arranging the songs. That had a level of difficulty, too. But just piecing together all the levels to do it at the level, the quality of records I wanted to make… But, it was a process I appreciate so much.'
In his own words, Ocean calls the album 'nostalgic.' He explains, 'it's a longing for the past. That's what this record felt like.' The lyrical content, according to Ocean, relates to heartbreak and other familiar tropes of interpersonal relationships: 'I wasn't trying to make a record that people could relate to. I was just trying to make a record with the shit that I wanted to express. The shit that I wanted to get off my chest. [..] A lot of this record is influenced by one relationship, but I don't owe that whole project to one situation. It doesn't matter what the details of it are.' Discussing the writing process behind the album, he mused that he was just inspired to tell stories. He continued, 'you gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time. I guess it all starts with the stories for me.'
When asked by The Quietus if the songs from the album drew from his personal experiences, Frank commented 'My kitchen is usually pretty clean, you know. But you have fun with the imagery, and for me the whole concept that everything has to be.. Like, nobody gets upset with a director when a director's film isn't about his life. People think that with a recording artist that shit has to be like a fucking play by play of their whole life, but it's not. It's imagery, and a little bit of satire.' When asked if he made R&B music, Ocean replied that he disliked how that in the United States, 'if you're a singer and you're black, you're an R&B artist. Period.' Ocean stated that the songs on the mixtape do contain R&B influences, but that it is not an R&B album entirely.
The album begins with a melodic cover of 'Strawberry Swing' by English alternative rock band Coldplay. Connor O'Neill of The Miscellany News writes that the cover begins the album with 'so much atmosphere you almost melt into it' and then 'spreads you over an apocalyptic swan song'. The song ends abruptly with the rude sound of an alarm clock, followed by the 'nightmarish' song 'Novacane'. It has been called a love song of sorts, with influence taken from alternative hip hop group The Pharcyde. Lyrically the track explores a narrative in which the singer meets a girl attempting to pay her way through dental school by working in porn. Ocean meets the girl at Coachella, a musical festival which takes place in Indio, California. Ocean serves as the protagonist in the song, in love with a girl 'so gone on drugs that Ocean, wanting to be close to her, has no choice but to get gone on those same drugs'. The pair get high using dental local anesthetics. Ocean serves as an unreliable narrator.
Several interludes are placed throughout the album, named after video games, such as Street Fighter, Metal Gear Solid, GoldenEye 007 and Soulcalibur. This is reported to give the album a more nostalgic feel; the record is 'held together by tiny interludes named after 1990s video games in which the unmistakable sounds of a cassette player rewinding, fast-forwarding, and stopping are heard'. On the track 'We All Try', Ocean speaks out against homophobia. According to The Guardian, 'Odd Future's frequent use of the word 'faggot' unsettled liberal stomachs', and that 'Ocean was brave enough to stand alone once more, declaring on 'We All Try': 'I believe that marriage isn't between a man and woman, but between love and love'. On the same song he reveals his opinion of the pro-choice debate: 'I believe a woman's temple, gives her the right to choose/ But baby don't abort.' He obliquely 'announces his support of a woman's right to choose and gay marriage', both of which are 'hardly typical r&b tropes.' The song contains 'smooth, bedroom-type grooves'.
Pitchfork Media wrote that 'in a skit called 'Bitches Talkin', the ladies tell him to cut it out with the damn Radiohead, while 'Optimistic' is playing in the background; in 'Songs 4 Women', he obliges—he's an indie kid when it comes to alienation but a pragmatist when it comes to sex.' 'Songs 4 Women' is a song where Ocean can't decide whether to rue or revel in his conflicted feelings about women. The song offers a self-effacing perspective, with a numbed, restrained delivery. Lyrically the track expresses a narrative where he tries to arrange an after-school meeting in his dad's empty house and brags about harmonizing to Otis, Isley and Marvin. He laments that his woman doesn't listen to him or his music: 'It's like she never heard of me.' In spite of the 'suave delivery and the song's inherent tunefulness', the object of Ocean's affection soon ditches his love songs in favor of those sung 'by real R&B big-shots (Drake included)'.
The mixtape also contains several references to American director Stanley Kubrick and his films, most notably Eyes Wide Shut. Nicole Kidman's adulterous soliloquy from the film can be heard during the song 'Lovecrimes', adding a sense of manic dread.' The film is also referenced on the track 'Novacane', where Ocean also sings that he's 'feelin like Stanley Kubrick'. Following that is the track 'There Will Be Tears'. The song has been described as emotional in nature, containing a glitchy beat sampled from Mr Hudson, with heavily synthesised vocals. 'There Will Be Tears' has a thundering bass flat over a hyperactive 808 beat. Ocean sings about not having a father; 'Hide my face, hide my face, can't let 'em see me crying / Cause these boys didn't have no fathers neither / And they weren't crying', where he 'lets his guard down completely.'
'Swim Good' has been called an 'astonishing suicide song' and that Ocean finds himself dressed in black ('Like I'm ready for a funeral'), tormented by heartbreak and on the verge of driving his car into the sea. The song is a grim escape fantasy describing a murder suicide, which 'has the singer driving his car to the shore, his trunk 'bleeding' with 'broken hearts'.' The hook of the song ends with the refrain of 'I feel like a ghost, no Swayze, ever since I lost my baby.' 'Dust' uses books as an extended metaphor for memories and experience, with lines like 'so many pages I wrote, wish I could revise 'em / But there's no erasing'.
The penultimate track is 'American Wedding', a 7-minute remake of 'Hotel California' by American rock band Eagles. The track expresses an extended tale of a shotgun marriage and subsequent divorce. Its here that we 'might get a little peek into the psychology of the man shirking the foremost genre for love songs: He doesn't believe in love. At least not in the United States.' The song has a 'totally unexpected ending for a song told as a flashback.' The album ends with 'Nature Feels', a reinterpretation of MGMT's 'Electric Feel'. The song exhibits Ocean as an 'openly fun character', opening the song with the line 'I've been meaning to fuck you in the garden.' According to Pitchfork, no matter the mood, Ocean is always 'quick to add fine particulars that make his songs his songs'. Pitchfork called 'Nature Feel' an 'MGMT-sampling Garden of Eden fuck ode'.
Nostalgia, Ultra received critical acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the mixtape received an average score of 83, based on nine reviews, which indicates 'universal acclaim'. Anupa Mistry of Exclaim! called it 'sophisticated', 'pulsing and expansive', and wrote that Ocean's 'alt sensibilities' prove 'musically intuitive' AllMusic's Andy Kellman felt that Ocean's uniqueness lies in his 'wistful, often self-effacing perspective and numbed, restrained delivery' rather than his production choices, which he found 'neither exceptional nor particularly left of center'. AbsolutePunk praised the beats as 'unique, well-executed originals' and commented that songs such as 'Swim Good' and 'Strawberry Swing' show that 'Ocean's voice is as great as his knack for writing thoughtful pop songs.' Steven Hyden of The A.V. Club called the mixtape 'dark, playful, a little tasteless, and absolutely riveting'. Connor O'Neill of The Miscellany News wrote that, 'by funneling [the primary means of R&B decadence] through his diverse and diverging palette, Ocean literalizes both his nostalgic impulses and the odd future of which he is a part.' The Village Voice's Sean Fennessey called him 'an intuitive r&b stylist, with a firm sense of song structure.' Rudy K. of Sputnikmusic felt that the mixtape sounds 'so fresh, so real' for a member from Odd Future and stated, 'With Ocean, it never sounds contrived.'
In his review for MSN Music, Robert Christgau described Ocean's 'romantic laments' as 'models of texture, respect, and profound loss, their beats subtle, seductive, weird, and seized like time whether he's deploying 'songs for women' that are soon trumped by Drake's, not feeling a porn-moonlighting dental student and her 'novacaine,' or annulling a courthouse wedding solemnized just before his bride turned in her term paper on hijab.' Pitchfork Media's Ryan Dombal commented that 'There are distinct elements of Drake's melancholic paranoia and The-Dream's high melodrama, too. But there's also a heady surreality surrounding Nostalgia, Ultra that makes it unique.' Jon Caramanica of The New York Times called it 'slick and intuitive .. full of astral soul that owes debts to Terence Trent D'Arby, Pharrell Williams, even Drake', adding that '[Ocean] sings casually but precisely, stretching out syllables as if he's forgetting to let them go.' NPR's Andrew Noz commented that 'It's his songwriting, smart and subtle, that sets Ocean far apart from that pack', adding that 'The finest moments of Nostalgia, Ultra orbit the same soul-baring and minutiae-obsessed space as Marvin Gaye's breakup opus Here, My Dear or any number of Prince's more idiosyncratic ballads'. No Ripcord's Charlie Jebb wrote that 'Nostalgia, Ultra has more than enough good stuff to establish Ocean as an artist to watch,' calling it '[an] R&B record with crossover potential without sacrificing soul that creates a complete picture of its author, warts and all.'
On May 19, 2011, Ocean's record label Def Jam announced its plans to release an EP containing tracks from nostalgia, Ultra. Ocean announced that the re-release would have been titled Nostalgia, Lite and that it was expected to feature seven tracks. The EP was originally scheduled to be released on July 26, 2011, however, Ocean noted on his official Tumblr page on July 24, 2011 that Nostalgia, Lite would no longer be released on July 26 and that the project was cancelled.[36] Both 'Swim Good' and 'Novacane' were set to be featured on the release. Talking about which other songs would make it onto the reissue, Ocean commented that 'The Eagles sample 'American Wedding' has no chance in hell of being cleared'. He continued, 'Coldplay sample 'Strawberry Swing', possibly. I hear 'possibly' from people who say they know. MGMT, those guys seem chill. I heard they heard the record 'Nature Feels' and they liked it a lot, so hopefully that can go someway.' Other tracks on the reissue were set to be 'Acura Integurl', which appeared on the unofficial release The Lonny Breaux Collection, and 'Whip Appeal' which was released in 2012. In 2012, Ocean commented again on his blog that 'Nostalgia Lite is 'never coming out.'
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