Art Official Age (2014)
1. Art Official Cage
2. Clouds
3. Breakdown
4. The Gold Standard
5. U Know
6. Breakfast Can Wait
7. This Can Be Us
8. What If Feels Like
9. affirmation I & II
10.Way Back Home
11.Funknroll
12.Time
13.affirmation III
By the time Art Official Age appeared in 2014, Prince was once again enjoying a certain degree of critical goodwill. He had relinquished the unpronounceable glyph, abandoned the more outlandish visual provocations, and resumed life as a recording artist of flesh and blood, rather than symbol and spectacle. To many, this return to “Prince Classic” was cause for celebration. Yet beneath the surface charm of this apparent revival lay a far more fractured and confounding proposition.
Art Official Age is, at its core, an attempt at a concept album—though what precisely that concept is remains frustratingly opaque. The execution is disjointed. One is reminded less of a unified musical journey than of a road trip interrupted every few minutes by erratic detours, flat tires, and inexplicable roadside attractions. Whatever thematic through-line may exist is routinely obscured by the record’s relentless stylistic gear-shifting.
It begins, tellingly, with two of its most chaotic tracks. Art Official Cage and Clouds both tease potential—glimmers of funk, flashes of melodic intelligence—but neither is allowed to breathe. Instead, they are interrupted by jarring tempo changes, intrusive vocal effects, and voiceovers that feel less like narrative devices and more like non-sequiturs from a particularly flamboyant sci-fi audio book. Prince has always been experimental, but here the experimentation frequently feels forced, even desperate. The desire to be eclectic overshadows the instinct to be coherent.
Recurring throughout the album are interludes delivered in the familiar guise of a breathy, pseudo-erotic female narrator—a trope Prince returned to often in his later years. The dialogue—abstract, indulgent, and vaguely metaphysical—does little to clarify the album’s supposed concept and often disrupts rather than enhances the listening experience. One cannot help but wish Prince would simply let the music speak, rather than adorn it with extraneous narrative window dressing.
That said, buried within the excess are moments of genuine quality. The Gold Standard is a standout—a crisp, muscular slice of electro-funk that briefly recalls the effortless cool of the Jam of the Year era. Funknroll, too, makes a solid case for inclusion on a party playlist, despite its cluttered arrangement. And then there are the ballads: This Could Be Us and Breakdown, both of which hint at the emotional depth and musical subtlety that defined Prince at his most affecting. These tracks, unencumbered by concept, succeed because they are allowed to exist as songs rather than segments of a muddled theatrical presentation.
Visually, Prince presented the album with appropriate flair—resplendent in high-collared tunics, oversized round glasses, and a sculpted afro that brought to mind his For You debut, albeit reimagined for a digital age. The persona was intact, the mystique carefully recalibrated. Yet the record itself, for all its ambition, too often collapses under the weight of its own self-awareness.
Art Official Age is not without merit, but it is a record that demands patience—and, frankly, a tolerance for indulgence. For those seeking a streamlined, funk-forward experience, it is more obstacle course than oasis. Prince, ever the iconoclast, never made it easy. Here, he may have made it unnecessarily difficult.
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