The timeline follows the twilight of Cleopatra’s Ptolemaic Egpyt and her downfall to the present day, where one of the narrators seems to wake up from the past life he just experienced, only for us the listener of the song to find out that what happened in the dream version of the past is very much an allegory for the current events. P yramids‘ narrative follows a hallucinatory, possibly drug-induced hyperreality phenomenon that spans thousands of years, from multiple distinctive perspectives. I am also going to provide some cinematic comparisons to other films that are similar to the song’s theme and provide my takeaway from the song at the end. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to offer my angle which shall focus on Frank’s auteurist storytelling rather than the song’s actual production (which is incredible in its own right). And during my research for this article, I have found incredible discourse about the song from the likes of the Dissect podcast and Headstuff, crafted by actual music journalists and experts which I recommend you read if you are looking for a more authoritative perspective on the song. It does have to be noted that I am a bit out of my depth regarding constructing a comprehensive essay about music and this is only my second attempt in doing so after my article about the Indonesian folk song Bengawan Solo. So much so that it follows a rather cinematic approach to songwriting-something hardly unique but Frank has pulled off astonishingly. The imagery in the lyrics conjures up an epic tale that is while not idiosyncratic in Frank’s discography, is significantly more grandiose in scope than any track off Channel Orange, or anything else from his discography. But there is just something distinctively more ambitious with what Frank Ocean managed to accomplish in Pyramids. In truth, there’s a lot to say about any of Frank Ocean’s songs with their dynamic production and lyrical tours de force. There’s a lot to say about Pyramids, one of the single and narrative axis of Frank Ocean’s 2012 widely-revered album Channel Orange.
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