The illustration, which depicts a bright orange 1988 BMW that Ocean called ‘his dream car’, sets a certain mood: Nostalgia, Ultra is not just a vague nostalgia, it's a dream. He was 23 years old when he released the mixtape for free on his Tumblr, an act of defiance against his label Def Jam, which ignored Ocean and kept trying to persuade him to release it officially. His songs of the time reflect a brave, dreamy young man who buries himself in hedonism to suppress the loss of his innocence.
While in ‘Strawberry Swing’ he dreams of the past, in the next song, ‘Novacane,’ he wakes up and realises that sex and drugs are mixed. In ‘Novacane,’ Ocean is emotionally numb, stunned by the presence and then absence of a dental student and porn actress he met at Coachella. In a calm and atmospheric track, he talks about Viagra and sex under the influence of drugs. This track is the first on the album to showcase his courage and professional literacy: in it, he refers to Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick's last film, released in 1999. He talks about the film again in the later track ‘Lovecrimes’, in which he even includes Nicole Kidman's monologue from the film.
The mixtape is imbued with a duality: the impossibility of giving up your youth and the fact that you are more mature than most people your age. While four interludes named after video games unite the album and connect it to Ocean's youth, the reconstruction of rock classics and the use of indie and electronic samples demonstrate that Ocean's musical vocabulary was broad, mature and eclectic: In ‘Bitches Talkin’ Talkin‘ (Metal Gear)’, he uses a fragment of Radiohead's ‘Optimistic’ to make a subtle joke about his non-commercial musical taste. In the song ‘American Wedding’, he uses a fragment of the Eagles' song “Hotel California”, released 21 years before his birth. The band threatened to sue him for using the sample, and Ocean was also banned from performing the song live. The legal difficulties surrounding the samples may be the reason for the complete absence of the project on streaming platforms (only two singles, ‘Novacane’ and ‘Swim Good’, were officially released and remain available for download).
- Fagner Guerriero - albumlogy.com
