While you were weeping to white noise and falling asleep next to your computer every night this weekend awaiting Boys Don’t Cry, the Frank Ocean subreddit was working on its own tunes to drop.
It is Wednesday, my dudes. The long-awaited, perma-delayed follow-up to Channel Orange still isn’t out. Redditor JJ from Apple gave the people what they wanted on Tuesday night, though: a 32-track, Ocean-style opus titled Boys Do Cry that’s also… wait for it… a Harambe tribute album.
“Harambe dead but you still alive. Don’t know it though ’cause your stream ain’t live,” JJ from Apple proclaims on “FrankILY.” Interspersed with auto-tuned crying, mocking the media hype in “big if true,” and the 7-second truth bomb that is “I’ll be Honest” is a man working his way through grief.
Boys Do Cry is an album fit for a king of the jungle—and it’s everything you’d hope for in mixing the two biggest memes du jour with music. Case in point: The church organ slow burn of “Forest Gump,” off Frank Ocean‘s acclaimed first major label release, was sorely missing the touch of a 700-pound silverback gorilla. “Harambe Gump” turns the collective memeification of the beloved ape into an evocative anthem.
JJ from Apple’s efforts may even be better than whatever mixed-media art project Ocean inflicts on listeners and readers. And, unlike Ocean, who has stayed relatively silent since Harambe was killed, Boys Do Cry tackles the Cincinnati Zoo tragedy head-on. Nothing short of brilliant, the album is a highly politicized tour-de-force explicitly supporting the Dicks out for Harambe movement. Hell, there’s even a track named after the rogue activists on Boys Do Cry.
“Harambe is the lord. Ha-Harambe is the savior. Or Frank Ocean 2016,” JJ from Apple proclaims with uncertainty as the final notes of “Yes harambe modelz (J Cole remix)” slip away. As black and white as Ocean’s carpentry footage was, Boys Do Cry at least has some grey area for both Harambe lovers and fans of Ocean’s smooth croon. Whip your dick out and get to slow-jamming this record. It might be a while until Boys Don’t Cry actually happens, and even longer until Martin Shkreli resurrects Harambe’s corpse.