The following comment has been put to us regarding Frank Ocean:
Ni seems much higher in his stacking than Tert. He doesn’t seem at all like the other popular Fi/Se musicians who are more sultry and seductive and far less cerebral and metaphorical in presentation.
Here is our reply:
We are quite certain of Ocean’s type but of course as always we are susceptible to well-reasoned arguments. :-)
As a general point one should not underestimate the power and charm of the puerile function. To give a more salient example, both ENTPs and ESTPs can have a rakish charm to them which owes its existence to their puerile Extroverted Feeling. The puerile function has a certain innocence and optimism to it that, for example, the auxiliary function does not. This is something we hope to cover in more detail in our upcoming book on types.
It is true that Ocean is more introspective (though outside of his lyrics not necessarily more metaphorical) than other Fi-Se individuals. This can relate back to other things such as a stronger introversion than other ISFPs, or to differences in intelligence (IQ), something which we try to avoid assessing on this site.
Quite a few individuals have aberrant traits relative to the type you would normally expect (e.g. Lars von Trier). This is the difference between type and stereotype, if you will: When people first get into typing, many try to cram all psychological information on a person into the Jungian cognitive functions. And in doing so we are actually apt to betray the functions themselves.
That is why we introduce a dynamic qualifier in the typology of Theodore Millon (another thing we hope to cover in our upcoming book). Other people use the Enneagram (which we tend to stay away from) but essentially it serves the same purpose: To say something about a person’s personality outside of the cognitive functions themselves.
In the case of Frank Ocean, he avoids conceptualizations and associations in interviews. For example, he gets asked how far his music has taken him and he answers that it’s taken him to London. Likewise, he describes a music video where he wrecked a car and he says it was fun and again he shows a preference for staying with the actual experience and feeling that out to its fullest.
In doing research on him we watched every single interview that was available on Youtube back then and he showed no interest in universalizing his messages or experiences. If we are to take him at his word (and admittedly we do not always do so when typing people), the personal and the particular ranks higher than giving general form to his messages and, you could argue, this is in no small part what makes him such an effective artist.