Frank Ocean is a hard person to pin down. The 31-year-old has made it a point to defy the conventions of genre and celebrity throughout his career, rarely giving his audience a look into his personal life.
That’s why when Gayletter magazine sat down with Ocean for an extensive interview earlier this week, it was a big deal — the star rarely gives such interviews, so to give one chock-full of new insights and information for his fans felt like a gift.
One of the big revelations from the interview came when Ocean was asked about his use of dating apps. The star said that he doesn’t use dating apps because he has been in a committed relationship for three years. “I’ve been in a relationship for three years. I definitely wasn’t using dating apps before then,” he said. “I don’t think I would use dating apps now.”
Ocean was also asked about the phenomenon of RuPaul’s Drag Race, saying that while he doesn’t keep up with the show, he wouldn’t rule out a guest judge spot. “I’ll say this: Of all the talent shows on TV, that would be the most likely,” he said. He also was asked on whether or not he considered “Frank Ocean” the performer as a drag persona. “Hmm, that’s interesting. I’ve never considered that,” he said. “The genesis of that name change came from me trying to make a project without my label knowing about it…it came about in such a way that I didn’t think about whether it was armor for me.”
But Ocean also waxed poetic on the trappings of fame, saying that he found it important to have the right kind of goals when trying to make it in the music industry. “A lot of people I talk to about careers in the music industry, their ideas of success have to do…with tropes of success, things they’ve been shown over the years that represent what a successful career is,” he said. “For me, it’s about ‘Why am I doing this? What exactly do I want from this? And how do I get those specific things I want out of this? And what does success look like on those terms?’”