In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 148 on the magazine's revision to the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. Products labelled '*item fulfilled by Exertis on behalf of hmv' will be supplied to you directly by Exertis via their approved couriers.

Earl Sweatshirt's vocals on Super Rich Kids, adds an extra element to the track which I really like. Ocean's narratives generally depict dark, [36] broken characters, [10] and a Southern California setting, [35] with references to its sunny, coastal environment in both the lyrics and melodies. For his lyrics, Ocean used both his past personal experiences and imagination to compose narratives for songs.Ocean titled the album in reference to his experience with grapheme–color synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon in which an individual's perception of numbers and letters is associated with the experience of colors. Greg Kot wrote that Ocean presents "a dialogue between his self-gratifying lust and more selfless conscience", with Prince-like "psychedelic-gospel inflections" and Marvin Gaye-like overdubbing of Ocean's vocals, which give the impression of voices in conversation with one another. Reviewing in July 2012 for The Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick said Ocean has drawn on a variety of musical ideas and pushed the boundaries of the electronic, beat-driven sounds currently dominating popular music.

The songs are confessional yet guarded, alive to all sorts of musical and lyrical possibilities, working in a number of genres within the space of a single composition, alert to both dream imagery and realistic observations of the world around him. C., Ocean reflected on the tour and wrote on his Twitter account, "This tourlife takes some getting used to. It is composed as a character sketch of a young parent, [57] who sings his infant daughter to sleep. Ocean produced most of Channel Orange and was assisted by Malay, [6] who also played guitar, bass, keyboards, and brass instruments.The mixtape caught the interest of recording artists such as Kanye West, Beyonci Knowles and Jay-Z, and he appeared on Watch the Thrones "No Church in the Wild" and "Made in America". Credits are adapted from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) [136] and Tidal.

During their writing sessions, Malay noticed Ocean's use of gender pronouns in his lyrics, but attributed it to Ocean's poetic license rather than his sexuality. Ocean’s inflection is more Musiq Soulchild than Purple One, although his voice is more textured and his sound a bit broader.Along with songs from Nostalgia, Ultra and Channel Orange, Ocean performed " Made in America", his unreleased songs "Summer Remains" and "Voodoo", and covers of Prince's " When You Were Mine" (1980), Beyoncé's " I Miss You" (2011), [102] and Sade's " By Your Side" (2000). Music journalist Sasha Frere-Jones noted "a combination of decadence and spiritual ache similar to Prince's". The front cover features an orange background superimposed by the title – "channel" rendered in lower-case Cooper Black font and "orange" rendered in all upper-case Sans-serif, with the former overlaid by an image of colored spots from a camera flash.