 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 . In an interview after Ocean 's open letter , Malay called him " the new hybrid of what an MC used to be in the ' 80s or ' 90s ... the true storyteller " and said of the lyrics , " I don 't think anyone during any given point during the creative process knew what was happening ... when he 's singing maybe from a female perspective or whatever , it 's a story , it 's a world that he created . It 's not necessarily his personal — like something that he ’ s experiencing . Maybe it is and it 's a metaphor the way he did it " . They finished writing Channel Orange in two to three months . Ocean said of the album 's development in an interview for Rap @-@ Up , " It succinctly defines me as an artist for where I am right now and that was the aim . It 's about the stories . If I write 14 stories that I love , then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story and all kinds of sonic goodness . " 
