When CNN host Anderson Cooper publicly announced that he is gay, it easy to see how important it was for him and the gay community as a whole. After all, he's one of the nation's most influential journalists and unfortunately, has an audience he was risking by publicly announcing it.
It was hard to imagine a similar announcement by R&B singer Frank Ocean perhaps having a larger impact but so many factors make Ocean's announcement far more inspiring.
Ocean is a member of the hip-hop collective Odd Future, who have been targeted by gay rights groups for their heavy use of homophobic lyrics and gay slurs. His announcement would have been shocking if just analyzed in the shell of his own entourage, despite the amount of support he has received from Odd Future frontman Tyler the Creator after the announcement.
The nature of his announcement was especially striking. It wasn't just an email where he simply admitted to being gay, he went into intimate detail about his relationship.
"It was my first love, it changed my life," Ocean wrote on his website about his relationship as a 19-year-old. "Back then, my mind would wander to the women I had been with, the ones I cared for and thought I was in love with.
"I realized they were written in a language I did not yet speak."
This type of honesty is uncharacteristic for the hip-hop industry. It's an industry that hangs on your credibility, something that now directly contradicts the sort of language his own hip-hop group has used for the last few years.
It is a perfect example of where the industry is at. Despite having Ocean and another member, Syd tha Kyd, an open lesbian, Odd Future has used homophobic messages to get to the success it has reached.
Ocean is brave for announcing it now. He is coming off a successful effort on Kanye West and Jay Z's "Watch the Thone" and will be releasing his first full-length studio album "Channel Orange" on July 17. It's a big risk for him, but it shows how much more influential it can be for rising stars.
Maybe the type of heartfelt announcement Ocean made can make a difference in a music industry that has very few gay representatives. At the very least, it should give hope to other aspiring rappers and hip-hop artists to see someone with so much success be willing to risk it to be true to himself.
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