Frank Leone Is Ready to Step Back in the Wild
Photos by Michael Salisbury
Sometimes you have to give in to your wildest dreams to discover yourself. For Frank Leone, this meant fully immersing himself in his music and embarking on an odyssey across multiple cities in the pursuit to continue creating regardless of his circumstances. After years of sacrifices and lessons learned, Frank feels closer than ever to releasing the long-awaited sequel to his debut album, EnterWILD, and an accompnying visual project we might get to see on TV one day.
Back in 2014, Frank was known in the Chicago blog scene as a young producer and emcee who had recently started his freshman year at Columbia College. However, feeling hindered by the school’s high tuition cost, Frank, who’s originally from Monticello, Illinois, dropped out following the release of EnterWILD that same spring. With his eyes set on an ambitious follow-up project, he decided to move closer to home to Urbana.
What followed was, for Frank, the most important year of his life so far. “There was a lot of personal growth that happened,” Frank says, “learning what my voice is and how I wanted to use it as an adult both musically and in general.”
EnterWILD introduced us to a fantastical world placed in the forest of his hometown. But for its sequel, Frank has his sights on a more expansive world. “I want to take us off the land a little bit, up a mountain, and serve the whole thing this time: full narrative, big cast, big ideas, twists, and things of this nature.”
That early period of personal growth inadvertently led to what Frank now describes as the “dark ages,” between 2015 and 2019. It’s an era where he was broke, hungry for opportunities, and in a constant state of mourning. “A lot of personal tragedies occurred in that time. Six friends of mine died, and there was just working a lot of shit jobs.”
But Frank didn’t give up, and through the pain, he ended up creating some of his most profound music to date, including “Huffing Paint,” a moving eulogy for one of the friends that passed away. That record opened doors for Frank which led to a few label meetings, flying out to L.A. and sleeping on couches.
“Shoutout to the homie Sagan [Lockhart] in West Hollywood, that man showed me generosity I had never seen among damn near-strangers,” Frank still recalls in awe, “This fool let me pull up with all his skate homies and then crash on one of these multiple couches for like spring and summer as I figured my life out.”
The meetings in L.A. didn’t materialize into a deal. Still, they gave Frank the validity he needed to keep creating and find new outlets to turn his album into an ambitious reality. Through trial and error, he developed a passion for writing screenplays and, by placing himself in the right places at the right time, he found a home with TV network FX, where partners like Lakeith Stanfield and Hiro Murai are helping bring it to life. It's a project in its early stages of pre-production, and one Frank is keeping close to his chest.
At the end of 2018, Frank made a temporary move out to L.A., initially staying in a small trailer on the property rocks of Teardrops Estates, aka underground legend Ross Harris, whom he first contacted after watching a music video Ross directed. What began as a few exchanged emails turned into Ross opening his doors to a relative stranger and forging a close friendship.
While putting the pieces in motion for the EnterWILD sequel and its tentative TV adaptation, Frank kept working on music, experimenting with different sounds, and finessing himself into more opportunities. These adventures resulted in a handful of full-length projects that we began receiving in 2020.
There’s DON’T, a gnarly 10-track record that was inspired by his first few months in L.A. With low funds, Frank would just stay home working on songs, a self-imposed quarantine before the pandemic even started akin to purgatory. The project’s mix of bossa nova, jazz, and distorted hip hop sounds renders an overcast theme of being consumed by your own thoughts in solitude.
“The living was hell, and it was so sunny and beautiful outside when it wasn't cloudy, but it was so shitty inside. Awful, just mind-glowingly awful,” Frank says. “This was that escape. And it wasn't like the escape world was that pretty.”
At the top of 2021, he dropped SUNDROP, a collaboration with Teardrop Estates that’s fun and abrasive, with Frank gliding over the producer’s synths and funky production. Next up there’s an R&B album titled FISH, which Frank is eager to share. “This is the first time that I've had really lifelong friends produce whole pieces of music,” Frank tells me. “I worked with a very interesting combination of jazz musicians.” Collaborators include the bassist for Bad Bad Not Good and Coco O, among a few other familiar names from previous projects.
Along the way, Frank decided to return to Chicago, where he’s now working on finishing FISH, his show, the elusive album, and a few other side projects —including a script he wants to pitch to Pixar. When asked if he feels any pressure by the expectations he’s been able to build for himself, his answer is blunt and honest.
“Yes, yes, with everything. A deep sense of urgency. It's a team sport, and to have this team, and to be playing this sport at this period of my life is un-fucking-believable. It doesn't make sense. I'm just so grateful to be doing it. I'm always excited to move on to the next stage and excited to learn more and learn the obstacles ahead and just get a better lay of it before we get to each thing because it's allowed me to select creative muscles that I didn't think I was interested in ever doing. We’re only so far ahead, so it feels crazy to me.”
Frank’s story is one of perseverance, building a foundation brick-by-brick and knocking down doors when it’s needed. Seven years after leaving Chicago, he’s back, still following his passion with a slightly reconfigured set of dreams, skills, and titles. So, what would 2014 Frank think of the Frank of today?
“He might have hoped for it to occur a little sooner, but he's going to learn that shit takes time. I've had some drug experiences where I looked ahead to this point in my life and thought like, ‘Yeah, you could do that,’ and I'm doing it,” Frank says. “He was right; he had to drop out; shit was going to get hard. But he was ready for the hard work, took his toll, had his victories, and is going strong.”
