From Spotify Studios, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes.

I'm your host, Cole Kushna. Today we continue our serialized analysis of Channel Orange by Frank Ocean.

On our last episode, we dissected the first half of the 10 minute epic pyramids.

There we were introduced to Cleopatra, a black queen loosely based on the last ancient Egyptian

Pharaoh. Her story was told through the eyes of her lover, an unnamed man we

suspect was also royalty. Cleopatra was missing and the narrator believed she'd been kidnapped.

Ultimately he finds her in bed with Samson in the song's second verse.

This revelation is followed by Cleopatra's death in the first half's final hook.

She's killed by a serpent's bite, a climatic. Patra's death in the first half's final hook.

She's killed by a Serpent's Bite, a climactic event

heightened by Frank's passionate delivery.

I don't know more she lives, no more.

Surbuns in the room.

Oh no more, oh, oh, yes, he asked you.

We'll bet you.

We're that try. Immediately following the first half's final hook, we hear the song's middle section, a

transportative interlude of hazy sustained chords and arpegiated synthesizers. Oh, Harmonically this passage begins to shift outside the song's established

F minor key signature. The tempo also decreases dramatically and the

overall effect is a loss of time and pulse.

This middle section comes to serve as a time-travelling wormhole as the song transitions into

its second half.

When Ocean finally begins to sing again, he describes motel rooms, women's underwear, lipstick, and high heels.

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