Frank Ocean Reveals His Past as a ‘Dope Dealer’

By: Amanda Anderson-Niles

R&B singer Frank Ocean has managed to rise quickly to the forefront in music by working with some of the biggest names in the industry and opening up about his sexuality, but his beef with Chris Brown has been keeping him in the headlines as of late. The two singers have been at odds for quite some time, but things became explosive after they got into a fight in the parking lot of a recording studio several months ago. Although Sean Kingston recently claimed that it was actually Frank who started the altercation, Franks’ own cousin recently filed a lawsuit against Chris Brown for his injuries and blamed him for the entire incident.

Interestingly enough, it now appears Frank Ocean may have had a troubled past himself. In his recent interview with Oyster Magazine, the singer and songwriter admitted that he used to be a drug dealer when he was in high school. In fact, he says he used to sale c*caine and crack:

“…You know, I didn’t ever have a disciplinarian in my creative life. As a young person I didn’t have — for lack of a better word — I didn’t have a Joe Jackson in my family. I didn’t have that sort of overbearing stage-parent… Or, even, I didn’t even have a parent who encouraged what I did in that way. And — don’t bring out the string section. It’s not really sad — what it did foster is… Well, my attitude was pure. I love to make music, and I love to write. It was writing first. I love to write and express myself in that medium, so that was the pure part — just the love of doing something, but there was also this fantasy of what the lifestyle would be and what the trappings of success would be. There are different little montage clips that you make up in your mind, like what a day in the life would be like once you’re a fully grown whatever-you’re-going-to-become, you know?

“I was a thug. I sold a lot of cocaine and crack. All the time.”