Rapper and R&B crooner Frank Ocean is set to follow up last year’s critically acclaimed Nostalgia, Ultramixtape and Watch the Throne appearances with his highly-anticipated studio debut, Channel Orange, this summer. Ahead of its release, Ocean has dropped the minimalist cover art for the album alongside the official tracklist, thus confirming appearances from the likes of Odd Future’s Earl Sweatshirt, John Mayer and Andre 3000. The 17-track Channel Orange is due out on July 17.

1. Start
2. Thinkin’ Bout You
3. Fertilizer
4. Sierra Leone
5. Sweet Life
6. Not Just Money
7. Super Rich Kids (Feat. Earl Sweatshirt)
8. Pilot Jones
9. Crack Rock
10. Pyramids
11. Lost
12. White (Feat. John Mayer)
13. Monks
14. Bad Religion
15. Pink Matter (Feat. André 3000)
16. Forrest Gump
17. End

Source: HYPETRAK 

Photographer Troy Holden was invited inside the newly inhabited Twitter offices in the Mid-Market neighborhood of San Francisco. Spread out across three floors of the building, luxury amenities include a yoga studio, rooftop garden, arcade and micro-health cafeteria. In 2011, Twitter opted to stay in San Francisco after the city’s Board of Supervisors approved a tax break that eliminated the payroll tax for new hires – segueing to their new 11-floor art deco building home.

Source: HUH.and Hypebeast

Newly-appointed Yves Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane has decided a name change is in order for the storied brand in order to make a splash in the always-competitive high-fashion landscape. The house will be re-branded as “Saint Laurent Paris,” although the recognizable YSL logo will maintain a presence within the brand. According to WWD, Slimane is “recapturing the impulses that inspired the founder to launch the Saint Laurent Rive Gauche ready-to-wear line in 1966 – among them youth, freedom and modernity.”

Source: The Telegraph and Hypebeast

Launching this summer from COMME des GARCONS is AMAZINGREEN, a new “green” fragrance meant for both men and women. As with the brand’s previous fragrances, AMAZINGREEN looks to offer a unique and intense bouquet, this time harnessing the scent of smoke and flint for a gunpowder-like perfume. Offering bold notes of musk and spice, the fragrance is said to offer a complex aroma that also combines hints of ivy, orris roots, coriander seeds and silex with notes of palm leaves and green pepper. COMME des GARCONS AMAZINGREEN will be available exclusively from the UK’s Selfridges this July before rolling out to additional retailers come August.

Source: Ape to Gentleman and Hypebeast

Named for its cross-sectional resemblance to the letters E and a backward E (or 3), Maison E3 is the multi-leveled masterpiece recently completed by Natalie Dionne Architecte near the Jean Talon Market in Montreal, Canada. Apart from its interesting split-level duality that connects the E annex to the 3 annex with flights of stairs, the remarkable architecture uses liberal glass panes including a skylight to facilitate natural light and ventilation within the house, at the same time creating an impressive play on light and space from many angles. Natalie Dionne and Martin Laneuville were both on the design team for the project.

Source: designboom and Hypebeast

After making recent buzz regarding Surface, Microsoft rolls out a preview of its plans for the mobile future. Windows Phone 8 presents the most advanced mobile operating system to date. The architecture will obviously support the current crop of dual-core processors but will also make way for quad-core and up to 64-core processors. In essence, it uses the same kernel, file system, media foundation, device drivers, and a similar security model as its bigger brother Windows 8 to allow device encryption, removable storage with microSD cards, and other improvements that IT pros and businesses will appreciate. Apart from the performance boost, advanced integration means that developers will be able to leverage desktop and phone apps. Windows Phone 8 promises in a nutshell the foundation for bigger, sharper screens, more flexible storage, wireless sharing, a new Internet Explorer 10, better online security features, improved Nokia maps and directions, and a new digital “Wallet” that when paired with a secure SIM can pay for things with a tap of the phone. It will also enable video calling and anchor social networks like Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn to your personalized Start screen so that you can see our friends’ instant status updates, easily stream images and share across multiple social networks. It all sounds very promising, except that anyone who actually cared enough to buy a Windows Phone in the last two years won’t be able to upgrade their phones to the new version.

Source: The Verge and Hypebeast