When Frank Ocean sang “said she need a ring like Carmelo,” on his 2016 “Nikes”, he wasn’t referring to Carmelo Anthony (a basketball player who failed to secure an NBA championship ring) but an XXXL cock ring. Where so many celebrity brands are completely sexless – flower power nail polishes and cloying tote bags – last weekend Frank pushed Homer into the homo, abandoning all the pixelated NFT necklaces for pixelated dick pics. And it’s romantic, actually. Just imagine getting down on one knee to slide the 18-karat piece onto your lover’s appendage.
At this point it’s probably worth noting that the H-bone XXXL is purely decorative. While traditional cock rings constrict blood flow and heighten an orgasm, Frank’s clips onto the penis much like a toe ring would – albeit at £27,000. Written into stan Twitter doctrine, this is the final component of an especially (un)Holy Trinity: bringing Charli XCX’s douche and Lady Gaga’s Chromatica jockstrap in unison with one another. And it’s an accessory tied into musical history – in 2015 Lenny Kravitz squatted to the stage and bust-opened his leather slacks, revealing a glimmering crown jewel of the same making, and Eminem once gifted Elton John and his partner diamond-encrusted cock rings to celebrate their nuptials.
While fans are disappointed that Frank has decided to release a jewelled-shrimp ring before dropping, I don’t know, an album, others are expressing operational concerns: namely that they look a little sore. What’s unclear, however, is whether the thing has even been made for the genitalia at all, because the piece is being sold, at least online, as a bog-standard finger ring. Gasp! Was it all a ploy? Are we really that easy to rile? Either way, it’s clear the words “Frank Ocean” and “Cock” were cooked-up in a stroke of marketing genius. And it gives a whole new meaning to “Novacane”, too.