On Thursday night a tweet from March 18, 2016 blew up. According to that March tweet, Twitter user @mishkwan met a guy in a bar who was trying to impress her. Said guy told her and a group of people that he was working on a super secret project teaching Frank Ocean to build a spiral staircase; he even signed an NDA and everything! Naturally, she didn't believe him, and decided to tell her Twitter followers about it.
Fast forward five months later and guess what? Frank Ocean is building a spiral staircase in the video for his visual album Endless. Mishi, as her friends call her, was kind enough to hop on the phone with Complex to discuss the tweets in question, the subsequent flood of notifications that blew up her phone, and Frank disappointing her back in 2015.
What do you remember from that day?
It was my friend's 21st birthday, so we were drinking in the Lower East Side. My friends pretty much abandoned me, so I was at this bar on Avenue A with a bunch of strangers, and one of them starts telling me about how he's teaching Frank Ocean how to build a spiral staircase, and that he signed a non-disclosure agreement for it. [Laughs.] I didn't believe him, because why would you tell the truth about having to sign an NDA? I'm from L.A. and NDAs are such a regular thing out there—I'm supposed to be impressed?
Was he trying to holler at you?
I don't think it was that. He was def trying to impress the group of us. I really have no idea what he was shooting for. [Laughs.]
Do you remember how he looked?
He looked like everybody at the bar: punk, unwashed hair. He seemed really young, I'm surprised they let him in the bar.
Have you watched the stream yet?
I haven't, I got in late last night.
Well, Frank really is building a spiral staircase. Either dude was telling the truth or knew somebody involved and tried to stunt.
He said he was teaching Frank how to build it. I didn't know it was going to be for a livestream and I don't think the guy telling us knew either. He said it was for a music video. I'm not going to believe that. [Laughs.]
On Aug. 1st, you tweeted, "I guess this is real."
I woke up after the stream had happened, and I'm in this group of Twitter people who're in HHH Twitter [a subreddit called Hip-Hop Heads] and all of them were telling me to take my account off private so they could retweet it. It blew up from there.
This shit is bugged out. We interviewed home improvement guru Bob Vila last week and said it looked like Frank was building speakers, not stairs.
I remember people saying he can't be building stairs because he needs some metal reinforcements, something about having certain screws, I think. I don't know, I have no experience in carpentry; I dropped out of art school. [Laughs.]
Have you seen that dude again?
Never! He could've been murdered for breaking the contract. [Laughs.] I barely remember what he looks like.
What was your initial reaction when he was saying all this shit?
I kinda knew where he came from because of the people we were around. They were a bunch of trust-fund kids who grew up with a lot of privilege and luxuries. He just came across as sort of a tool. [Laughs.]
So how about when the tweet started to blow up last night?
I was in Teaneck, N.J. and it was just an endless scroll of notifications. People have weird Twitter handles, is something I noticed. [Laughs.]
Are you a Frank Ocean fan?
I am. When I was living in L.A., I bought tickets to FYF Fest when he was headlining it, but he backed out and was replaced by Kanye.
So he's disappointed you before. Do you care about all the delays with this new album?
I understand the frustration from the fans, but after the second or third time, you figure it'll just happen when it happens. I think the New York Times said it was going to drop on a certain date and it didn't happen. I mean, they're a very credible news source.
How do you feel about the dude now, in hindsight?
Indifferent, honestly. He was just a person I met while bar hopping. That night was pretty shitty. I drank a bunch of vodka cranberries, and woke up super hungover. [Laughs.] I mean, the fact that he doesn't lie about things that he's not even supposed to talk about, is not going to change the type of person he projected himself to be when I met him.
