Frank Ocean's Surprising Slide Back to Pop

“Frank Ocean appears courtesy of Frank Ocean,” reads the liner notes to Calvin Harris’s new single “Slide,” which in this unseasonably warm late February has kicked off the 2017 song-of-the-summer battle. Most artists only ever appear anywhere courtesy of their record label, but Ocean is a free agent and this song is another surprise move in his ongoing rewriting of pop stardom.

Last summer, the buzzy R&Band , that defied conventions both musically and business-wise. The latter of the two releases—the one that was actually for sale and had distinguishable songs, in contrast to the —arrived not via his record company, Def Jam, but . Through years of wrangling (and , the new corporate patron of label-agnostic pop artists), he had freed himself of the kind of contract that once was considered both prize and necessity for new singers.