Prince helped me with my sexuality: Frank Ocean

GRAMMY Award winning singer, Frank Ocean has penned an emotional open letter following the death of music icon Prince.

Ocean who revealed in 2012 his first love was a man said Prince made him feel comfortable about his sexuality.

“He was a straight black man who played his first televised set in bikini bottoms and knee high-heeled boots, epic. He made me feel more comfortable with how I identify sexually simply by his display of freedom from and irreverence for obviously archaic ideas like gender conformity etc,” he said in the letter on his Tumblr page.

“My assessment is that he learned early on how little value to assign to someone else’s opinion of you…an infectious sentiment that seemed soaked into his clothes, his hair, his walk, his guitar and his primal scream.

Prince died overnight at the age of 57 at his estate Paisley Park in Minneapolis only four days after hosting an all-night concert there and a week after his private plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Illinois after the musician fell ill.

His publicist confirmed the death in a statement: “It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer, Prince Rogers Nelson, has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57. There are no further details as to the cause of death at this time.”

Prince was named one of Rolling Stones’ top 100 musicians of all time, was a multiple Grammy award winner, had won a Golden Globe and Academy Award, and had sold over 100 million albums worldwide.

Ocean, whose debut album Channel Orange was released to critical and commercial acclaim, broke his online silence to express his sorrow over Prince’s death and to thank him for the influence he had on his life.

“He moved me to be more daring and intuitive with my own work by his demonstration – his denial of the prevailing model… his fight for his intellectual property. A vanguard and genius by every metric I know of who affected many in a way that will outrun oblivion for a long while,” he said in the letter.

“I’m proud to be a fan (stan) for life.”