CG Watkins

What’s your earliest memory of being in a car?

Frank Ocean

I remember my Moms had a red Geo Prism, and we drove from, like, northern Nevada to here. I don’t really remember the drive, I just remember having to go through the checkpoint, you know, where they check for fruits and vegetables in your car… And my Mom had hidden a bag of navel oranges under the seat.

CG Watkins

Is there a certain feeling that you associate with that moment?

Frank Ocean

Sunlight. Just pure natural sunlight. And movement… (Make a left right here, and then a right. And watch the radar.)

CG Watkins

Wait… They have speed radars in LA? I wish I’d have known! I think I may have a few tickets heading my way…

Frank Ocean

Yeah, man. (And then you want to take a right on Santa Monica.)

CG Watkins

And is that association with light and a sense of movement a feeling that you still get when you step into a car now?

Frank Ocean

Well, I guess that’s kind of a given inside a car, that sense of movement thing.

CG Watkins

But in terms of movement equating to escape, a lot of people get into a car just to drive, with no destination in mind.

Frank Ocean

Yeah, people say they do that. I often feel like I’m the only one that does that, but I guess I’m not.

CG Watkins

Well, it’s one of the few accessible means of physical escape for a lot of people. After an argument with a girlfriend, or going to buy some milk but driving for miles out of your way, that kind of thing…

Frank Ocean

Well, I never go for milk, and I don’t have a girlfriend. Haha… But I see what you mean. Getting away, for sure. There’s nothing quite like it, especially if you’re in the right car. But no matter what car you’re in really. My first car, I had an Acura Integra. It was stick shift, no A/​C, the windows were super tinted, and it had this loud ass exhaust but it wasn’t very fast. It was just super… Mail-order.

CG Watkins

And that was your first-ever car? What was the first car you bought with money that you’d earned through music?

Frank Ocean

A 550 series BMW, a 550i.

CG Watkins

Nice!

Frank Ocean

Yeah, it was nice. It was my… Third favourite BMW that I’ve owned.

CG Watkins

And what are the top two?

Frank Ocean

Um, my M3… Well, ok, so maybe it was my fourth favorite! The top three would be: my E90 M3, probably the best handling car I’ve ever owned, then the E30 that I’m building, probably the coolest car I’ve ever owned, and then this car, this new M5, is the nicest car I’ve ever owned.

CG Watkins

Yeah, It’s pretty nice!

Frank Ocean

Yeah, I like it. It’s not bitch-made, either. It’s got some heart, but it’s still…

CG Watkins

… Still a luxury sedan.

Frank Ocean

Yeah, it’s still appropriate for LA driving. Quiet.

CG Watkins

Because LA can be quite a grid, right? A very stop/​start driving experience, very hard to get lost.

Frank Ocean

Not as empirically grid-like as Manhattan, but it’s… Pretty organized.

CG Watkins

And does that ever make you want to get out of it, go up into the canyons to get onto a road that isn’t so straight ?

Frank Ocean

Yeah, I mean, from my apartment you can see pretty far, see how schematic it all is. And I can’t help but always notice it. But I like to drive the canyons because usually it’s a break from the traffic, not everybody driving into LA takes advantage of the canyons. Like, Laurel’s pretty popular because it’s right off a busy spot on Sunset, but Coldwater you have to go through Beverly Hills, almost to Bel Air, and it starts right in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel and is usually pretty chilled. But you can’t ever really escape LA traffic if you’re driving in the city, no matter what you’re doing.

CG Watkins

A lot of non-Americans would call them ​“real roads”. They have curves, and if you have a car that has some ability you can test it a little. Do you ever bring your cars up here, to have more of a ​“driving experience”?

Frank Ocean

Oh yeah, for sure. It’s fun. It gets you off that grid.

CG Watkins

You’re from New Orleans originally, right?

Frank Ocean

Kind of, I’ll just give you the whole history. I was born at Long Beach Memorial Hospital, here in California, and then I moved to Nevada when I was five, my Mom moved us up there, and then we moved back to LA for, like, a split second, and then we moved over to New Orleans. So I pretty much grew up in New Orleans, and then I moved back here when I was eighteen.

CG Watkins

And how did you get here?

Frank Ocean

I drove.

CG Watkins

In the Acura?

Frank OceanNo, I wrecked the Acura!

CG Watkins

Really? Shit… Well, as long as you had fun doing it.

Frank Ocean

Nah, I was asleep doing it! It was terrible, I fell asleep. For a split second, and there was a levee…

CG Watkins

… Oh no.

Frank Ocean

Yeah, it just went straight into the water. It was crazy! It was ruined, and I had to leave it there, and when I went back people had stolen my sound system and shit… But after that I had a ​’91 Honda Civic that I bought for, like, a thousand bucks.

CG Watkins

So that’s what you made it here in?

Frank Ocean

No. Then, when I decided I was coming here, my Moms hated that I was moving, but I had bought the car myself, so she couldn’t take my car. But then she had a change of heart and helped me get a Nissan Maxima, it was an older one,
a 2002, but I thought it was tight. It was quick, quicker than my Civic for sure.

CG Watkins

You seem quite passionate about foreign cars. I don’t want to say ​“nobody buys American anymore”, because there are some decent American cars out there, but you definitely seem to have an affinity for European cars…

Frank Ocean

You know, Tesla is making a strong case for my dollar right now, with that Model S. I think it’s a really nice car. A friend of mine had the 22nd one they’d made, he was showing me around in it, it’s really nice. And it’s no gas, so that’s really attractive. But yeah, I mostly like the European cars, and Japanese cars, also.

CG Watkins

How many cars have you got?

Frank Ocean

Right now, I have three cars.

CG Watkins

And how many do you want?

Frank Ocean

Ha! Well, there are a few that I want. I would say that, if I had a garage, and if I didn’t have an accountant, I would probably have… Seven.

CG Watkins

So your Top 7, including the three you have now?

Frank Ocean

I want an R34 Skyline. I want a 911 Turbo…

CG Watkins

Old or new?

Frank Ocean

A new one. And I want a CLK DTM. I want a Tesla Model S. That’s four already, I guess… But, I’m getting rid of one of the BMWs, so I’m gonna add another one! And, my favourite truck… You know it’d really be a battle, because I love the heritage of the G-Wagons, but to me the Porsche Cayenne Turbo just takes it. As far as tech-wise, it just trumps it in almost every way.

CG Watkins

That’s one thing that really interests me about your taste in cars, you don’t care solely about appearances, there has to be something inside the car. You don’t strike me as the kind of guy that would buy a Hummer, for example…

Frank Ocean

Uh… No! Not unless the Hummer was running off of some, like, really environmentally friendly power source and was technologically advanced, and looked like the old model, too! I like when they do that, I was really impressed when Mercedes did the new interior with the G-Wagon, because they were reluctant to do that for a while. I like that they did that. I know that those, and the gull-wings, were the last hand-made Mercedes, but you know… Give me a little something! It’s modern times, you know, nobody wants to have the navigation system from ​’99!

CG Watkins

And the cars that you’ve had, besides this shiny new one we’re sitting in, tend to be older models, cars that you can customise and personalise…

Frank Ocean

Yeah, and do what I just touched on. With the E30 project, it’s an engine swap… But hang on, you know, I really wanted to do an E90 project, but it’s so expensive, and when I started the project over a year ago it was just out of reach. I wanted to do the E90 engine swap, with the double clutch and that new transmission that’s real fast. But I would basically have to buy that car, just to get those parts, and although my mechanic has the know-how it would’ve been over $100,000, and you’ve barely got your interior done! But yeah, I like to do that, put that new technology in those older body styles because… Just because body styles are new doesn’t make them better.
I think that’s cool, you know, if you can take an old car that you really love the body of, and bring it up to date.

CG Watkins

So, where would you draw the line between customising something in order to reach its ​“full potential” and restoring something to its original specs, how the designers of the car intended it to be.

Frank Ocean

Well, I’m pretty irreverent about that. You can fuse them. That’s a motif of my work, especially in my music,
I love bringing the worlds of analogue and digital together, but doing it in a way where they compliment one another. Taking the best of two things and making something that’s just… Modern.

CG Watkins

And also, looking back, you can imagine that if designers at that time had access to certain current technology, they probably would have taken advantage of it. You’re updating the heart of the car. It’s not like you’re using blue LEDs and spinning rims…

Frank Ocean

… like the under-body lights and shit! No, it’s all about the performance of the car, exactly.

CG Watkins

So, how deeply are you involved in the customisation process? Obviously you need to find a mechanic that you can trust, but also one you can collaborate with. You clearly know a bit about the cars themselves, and a lot about what you want.

Frank Ocean

There was one guy I found, I found him on the BMW forums whilst searching for a mechanic out here to help me with what I had in mind. And these guys… I mean, I’m an enthusiast and I enjoy cars, but I definitely learnt a lot through doing this project. But I change my mind a lot, I’m very particular, you’re right, about what we’re doing and how it’s done. Even if we’re working on… The headers, you know? I want my headers to be as attractive as the wheels, I want my engine bay to look as good as the interior.

CG Watkins

Inside and out.

Frank Ocean

Yeah, I’m big on that. But I do know when I don’t know shit about a particular thing. I try to learn, I ask questions, and I think that makes the whole experience better.

CG Watkins

I guess half the satisfaction you get from doing something is learning about it along the way…

Frank Ocean

Exactly.

CG Watkins

So, going back to that cheap and nasty customisation we spoke about, what is your definition of good and bad taste? Across the board: music, design, anything.

Frank Ocean

I think that bad taste is born from trying to appeal to outside opinions. I totally just freestyled that, so we’ll see if it stands the test of time! But, applied to cars, I don’t love that it’s always a matte colour now, I don’t love how people turned against chrome, I think that sometimes polished steel can look good.

CG Watkins

So you think that good taste is more about something being true to itself, rather than trying to appeal to the opinions of others, of the masses.
Because you can tell, I think.

Frank Ocean

Yeah, I think that there’s some sort of natural order running through things, and good taste is somehow allowing that to be seen or heard or experienced.
Something like the Fibonacci sequence, that’s present in so many naturally occurring things. I know that with music, a beat could be, like, four milliseconds behind, and the engineer is telling me that it’s not discernible to the ear, but I’ll just know that something’s out of place. And when its shifted I’ll feel that it’s just… right.

CG Watkins

Like an ingrained sense of knowing when something is right, when it looks or sounds or feels
how it should.

Frank Ocean

And you have to do something about it, you have to care about something for a while to really have a good feel for it. I don’t know if it’s innate, but you have to really spend some time with things to know if it’s ​“right” or ​“wrong”, and really develop good taste, your own taste.

CG Watkins

I really want to touch on your music now, and how it fuses with your passion in cars. You’ve used images of cars for the covers of your mixtapes and albums, and in your videos you’ve featured motorbikes and cars quite prominently. So it’s apparent, on the surface, that you’re interested in automotive culture, and clearly not in the usual Hummer-based aspirational way that is so prevalent in the music industry, but I was wondering if your automotive passion has influenced your music on a deeper, inspirational level.

Frank Ocean

There was a time when I wrote hundreds of songs a year and… (Make a right on Beverly, bro.) Um, so I was writing two sessions a day, every day, and it was work, and I worked a lot. You know, people love to talk about, ​“Oh, you wrote songs for so-and-so in the beginning”, but a lot of that time was really just practice, learning, me becoming familiar with how to mix records. And a lot of that was riding around with it in the car. That’s when I would listen to a lot of references, a lot of rough mixes, for both the previous records and also the upcoming one. It’s a lot of time spent in the car listening, because… Even if I was to break out into song right now, the sound in here is pretty dead, there’s not much reflection, so you get an accurate feel for the mix. Close to accurate, your sound system colours it a bit, but you also get a feel for what people hear when they’re riding around listening to it. Not in this car, maybe, because there’s a Bang & Olufsen system in this car! That’s what NS10 monitors are supposed to do, the popular reference monitors in studios. They’re old, wooden speakers that were designed to reference in-car speakers, and engineers love to say ​“It sounds like shit, but if I can make a record sound golden on shit, then… it’ll be pretty good”.

CG Watkins

Yeah, I was wanting to talk about that. I’ve always felt that the spatial design of the interior of cars is a perfect place to listen to music. Like you said, the acoustics are good, thanks to sound bouncing off the windows and the absorption of the seats and carpet, but also because when you’re listening to music in a car…You’re cut-off. In your own world. It’s cool that you ​“test-drive” the music that you’re working on.

Frank Ocean

Yeah, of course. And you know it’s the soundtrack for that escapism we just talked about. It’s definitely an almost daily practice of mine, listening to new stuff in the car…
Oh! You know I love this street, by the way, this is one of my favourite streets to drive in LA.

CG Watkins

This is Beverly?

Frank Ocean

Yeah it’s Beverly, we’re gonna cut across Sunset and Coldwater Canyon’s coming up. I like the palm trees, they really killed it with the palm trees over here.

CG Watkins

I only found out recently that they’re actually imported. I was kind of disappointed, but impressed at the same time, seeing how many of them there are.

Frank Ocean

Yeah, but they’ve been here so long they might as well be indigenous. (You know Coldwater, Gilbert? It’s this little left, right up here.)

CG Watkins

I’m starting to realise how much time you must spend travelling around. And when I think of how many lyrics in your songs describe situations or metaphors featuring cars, I’m wondering if the writing process sometimes takes place whilst driving, or being driven. Does the driving experience, or things that you see or hear whilst driving, inspire your music directly?

Frank Ocean

Nah… Well, in a way. You write what you know, at the end of the day. You have to know about something, through observation or experience, to be able to write about it well. And I spend a lot of time in cars, a lot time moving around in different places, so in the studio, or wherever I am when I’m writing, I’m pulling from a very large gallery of experiences. Oh! See that congestion I was talking about? You can’t escape, 5 o’clock in LA anywhere, this is what you get!

CG Watkins

I guess this is the view you have from the back seat, good choice for an air freshener then.

Frank Ocean

Ha! Yeah, she’s been in my last four cars.

CG Watkins

Still smelling good?

Frank Ocean

Nah, nah… I actually bought a bunch of her! They only smell good for, like, the first few days.

CG Watkins

So where are we heading now?

Frank Ocean

This is a shortcut to the valley, this is a road I like to drive. What are these trees? Pines, or cedars? It goes from palm trees to this kind of trees, I like that. It’s pretty windy, goes on for six or seven miles. And it’s also the route that I take to the mechanics.

CG Watkins

You keep all your cars at the mechanics?

Frank Ocean

Nah, I’ve got two parked back at my place, it’s just the E30 project at the mechanics.

CG Watkins

And out of the two at your place, which one do you normally take out?

Frank Ocean

Oh, this one. It’s more comfortable, especially driving around LA.

CG Watkins

And good for roadtrips, too. When was the last time you really escaped LA in this thing?

Frank Ocean

Oh, at New Years! I went up to Mammoth, near Yosemite. It’s pure snow, five hours north. It’s tight, beautiful.

CG Watkins

Good to get away from the sunshine and palm trees sometimes?

Frank Ocean

Very, very good. To get away from a constant 70-plus, which is cool, but it’s kind of fatiguing after a while.

CG Watkins

A lot of Californians like the grey days like today.

Frank Ocean

Oh yeah, I like it like this a lot. Where do you live?

CG Watkins

I live over in Paris, so I’m loving how gloriously warm it is in February over here. I’m going back to minus 5 tomorrow!

Frank Ocean

Damn!

CG Watkins

Not quite as bad as somewhere like Toronto, I have friends in Toronto saying that it’s minus 27!

Frank Ocean

Ouch! That’s deadly cold…

CG Watkins

Do you think if you lived somewhere like that you would be into different cars?

Frank Ocean

If I lived in Toronto I would probably have… Maybe a Porsche Cayenne, with snow tires. But you know, this… This could handle it. I guess you can put snow tires on anything, right? But I would probably prefer something AWD, just in case. When I was a kid I used to really love those Subaru Imprezas.

CG Watkins

Yeah, they were great. With the rally packs and all?

Frank Ocean

Yeah, I used to love those… Then I started liking the Audis. I wanted an RS4 badly.

CG Watkins

You really seem to be impassioned by cars that try to perfect a balance between performance and handling, as well as aesthetics. What they’re capable of doing. Have you ever gone out onto a test track, to really test some of them out?

Frank Ocean

I’ve never been to track and driven. And the only time that I’ve been to a track was back home in New Orleans, when I was younger. I went to an air show where they had this crazy, like, Dodge Ram with jet boosters just strapped to the cab, with these big-ass flames like a fighter jet coming off the back! And it was doing what seemed like 1000mph… Ha! I’ll never forget it…

CG Watkins

It’s so impressive, when you go to drag races, and you hear that BOOM when they take off… I never thought it could be that loud.

Frank Ocean

Yeah, like Top Fuel, hella loud. It’s crazy…

CG Watkins

So do you ever think you’ll give that a go, track driving? Or maybe some rally driving?

Frank Ocean

Um, rally? I don’t know about rally, you have to rely so much on the navigator. But I think I’d wanna do something like the 24 Hours of Nürburgring thing. But it seems like… A quick way to fall out of love with your car, though. Just get tired of driving.

CG Watkins

But you get around, right? When you’re touring in other countries, do you like to drive? Get a feel for how different places have a different driving experience?

Frank Ocean

I like to be driven. I mean, I normally have so much to think about. And I like to be driven because I don’t know where I’m going, and I feel that people drive almost too differently. Like in Paris, the way people drive…

CG Watkins

Yeah, they can be fucking crazy.

Frank Ocean

I was, like, it could take me a while to figure this out! London the same, but I went to the Middle East and I felt like I could drive comfortably out there, it was pretty docile. But Europe, I’d have to take it easy, and London and Japan have the whole ​“other side of the road” thing. I’m down, though. Actually I’m trying to get over to the BMW test track in Munich, give that a go, we’ll see.
But, like when I’m over in Japan, I like to check out the cars that you just can’t get over here. There’s some fun stuff there that you just don’t see over here. You could get it here, but over there they take it to another level. You see the GTR Skylines, R33, some versions of those old LS Lexus’ with those big grills, that have been lowered like crazy…

CG Watkins

They’re big into customisation over there…

Frank Ocean

Just customised into oblivion, but in good taste obviously, ​’cause they looked cool.

CG Watkins

And speaking of cultures driving differently, to a non-American it would be hard to differentiate between, say…. Driving in Louisiana and driving in California. Would you say that there’s a noticeable difference?

Frank Ocean

Oh yes! Louisiana drivers are less aggressive. And LA drivers are less aggressive than New York drivers.
I would say that Louisiana driving applies to the south in general, like Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama…
They all kinda drive the same. One characteristic of LA and even New York drivers: they turn corners tighter. They’ll really hug a corner. A lot of southern drivers, it’ll be like a real loose, wide-ass semi-truck turn around that corner, they’ll take their time, you know? I guess that’s how they do. And in New York they like to intimidate pedestrians with the front of their car…
I wish we could drive on the Los Angeles river, that’d be tight! That’d be good, get myself arrested.

(Now Frank’s driving, after Coffee Bean. Pulling out onto the street, there’s laughter from the back seat. Vill’s laughing at Gilbert, ​“Gilbert’s putting his seatbelt on! You know how many airbags is up in this motherfucker?!”)

CG Watkins

What are your LA landmarks?

Frank Ocean

76 gas stations, and things like In & Out burger were very ​“California” to me before. But after being here for a while they’re not really relevant anymore.

CG Watkins

How so?

Frank Ocean

Well, I don’t buy gas at 76 and I don’t eat at In & Out. But now it’s more like studios, and certain roads, like Coldwater Canyon. That’s very LA to me. And also Fairfax village, where all the Odd Future store and shit is. The Beverly Center, that’s very LA to me. And now Fat Burger, instead of In & Out, ​’cause I at least eat there.

CG WatkinsI’ve never tried it, it’s good?

Frank Ocean

Yeah, it’s very good. That’s a World Class hamburger, right there. In & Out’s good, too, but I just didn’t eat beef, and Fat Burger have their turkey burgers. Actually the first time I ate beef was in Paris!

(Frank pulls onto the freeway and gets the car up to 130mph. Vill swiftly straps on his seatbelt: ​“Shit, Gilbert, it’s cool to wear a belt, man!”)

Frank Ocean

You know, I have an uncle who’s blind, June. Of course, I call him Uncle June. When I’d first gotten my E90 M3
I picked him and my Moms up from a dinner and was going to drive him home. When he got in the car he asked what I was driving lately, I told him it was a new Toyota hybrid. He was asking me about the gas mileage just I was merging onto the freeway… I floored it. He went silent. I thought he was preparing to shout at me, but he just clenched his chest and whispered under his breath, ​“Hybrid…?”.