Frank Ocean Will Support Coldplay's European Tour
And the Eagles are very mad that he sampled 'Hotel California'.
Odd Future's Frank Ocean will support Coldplay in the band's upcoming European tour this August and September. The rapper sampled Coldplay's song 'Strawberry Swing' on his song of the same title appearing on last year's Nostalgia, Ultra, and it seems from his new support gig that Coldplay took it as a compliment. The Eagles, however, did not see the use of their song 'Hotel California' on Frank's same mix tape in such a positive light, which was sampled on the track 'American Wedding'.
Frank recently wrote on his Tumblr, "Don henley('s label —Rhino) is apparently intimidated by my rendition of Hotel California. He (They) threatened to sue if I perform it again. I think that's fuckin awesome... I didn't make a dime off that song. I released it for free. If anything I'm paying homage." An Eagles representative, Larry Solters, told SPIN in response, "Frank Ocean did not merely 'sample' a portion of the Eagles' Hotel California; he took the whole master track, plus the song's existing melody, and replaced the lyrics with his own. This is not creative, let alone 'intimidating.' It's illegal. For the record, Don Henley has not threatened or instituted any legal action against Frank Ocean, although the Eagles are now considering whether they should."
In an interview with Frank we did for issue #93, our writer told Frank that she loved that he had kept the entire guitar solo of 'Hotel California' in 'America Wedding'. He responded "How could you cut it?" and said "Nah, that's wack" about others who had.
It was announced a few weeks ago, on February 22, that Frank had officially cancelled his Future Music Festival appearance, which has already taken place in Brisbane and Perth, and will be held in Sydney and Melbourne this weekend and later in Adelaide and Malaysia. A statement from the festival organisers said that he pulled out "due to the delay of his debut album" and that "his commitment to the album, and creation of the right live show is paramount and he sends his deepest apologies that these plans have taken longer than anticipated." The statement also "assured that new dates will be forthcoming."
Can we expect a Kanye cameo on Frank's aforementioned debut album? There are rumours that Kanye could be working with OFWGKTA after photos of them together in the studio recently appeared online, and also after Kanye Tweeted these photos of himself, Tyler the Creator and Frank Ocean just hanging out on a private jet (as you do):
Read our complete interview with Frank here.
Ingrid Kesa
