Frank Ocean has been announced as the first headline act for next year’s Lovebox festival.
The singer has been confirmed for the Friday date for the two day London festival. The headline act for the Saturday has not yet been announced.
Frank Ocean has not performed in the UK since 2013 when he was promoting his 2012 debut album release, Channel Orange.
The wait for Blonde
The Pyramids singer released his second album, Blonde, in August of this year after a long wait from fans who thought the album would be coming out in July 2015. The delay led to the singer trending on social media a number of times and a sense of high anticipation from his fans.
There has been no official reason given for the delay of the album which was originally believed to be named Boys Don’t Cry.
The release of Blonde was followed by the visual album Endless, which came out the day before his second studio offering. The 45-minute visual album was streamed on Apple Music where fans watched Frank Ocean build a staircase in an empty room whilst the tracks played in the background. Endless was Ocean’s last release to fulfil his contract with Def Jam Recordings. It gained mostly positive reviews.
Blonde was released exclusively on iTunes and features vocals from Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar and Andre 3000.
A number of pop up shops were set up in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and London where free magazines were handed out to fans and the album was available with a choice of three different covers.
In the first week of its release, Blonde reached the number one spot on the Billboard 100 chart. NME recently named the album as the tenth best release of 2016.
Blonde was recorded at London’s Abbey Road Studios for three years and was produced by the 29-year-old singer.
Lovebox
Lovebox was founded by DJs Groove Armada and has been an annual event since it began in 2012. Previous headline acts for for the festival have included Rudimental, Snoop Dogg and Major Lazer.
Lovebox Festival will take place on the 14th and 15th of July 2017 at Victoria Park in London.
