Frank Ocean On Coming Out: It’s About My Own Sanity

Frank Ocean recently announced his bisexuality to the world on his personal Tumblr, and now the Odd Future singer is addressing it was so important for him to come out of the closet.

“I suppose a percentage of that act was because of altruism; because I was thinking of how I wished at 13 or 14 there was somebody I looked up to who would have said something like that, who would have been transparent in that way,” Ocean reveals to the Guardian this weekend. “But there’s another side of it that’s just about my own sanity and my ability to feel like I’m living a life where I’m not just successful on paper, but sure that I’m happy when I wake up in the morning, and not with this freakin’ boulder on my chest.”

Though hip-hop icons like Beyonce, Jay-Z, Tyler the Creator have all rallied behind the 24-year-old in support of his decision to come out, Ocean admits that there was still plenty of backlash.

How does he responds to the hate?

“People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear,” he says. “Me saying what I said on my Tumblr last week? Sure, evil exists, extremism exists.”

“Do you just not go outside your house? Do you not drive your car because of the statistics? How else are you limiting your life for fear?”