''Art Official Age'' is the thirty-seventh

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by American recording artist

Prince A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. Th ...

. It was released on September 26, 2014 by

NPG Records NPG Records is a record label that was owned by Prince and run by Trevor Guy. "NPG" is short for New Power Generation. It was founded to release his music after Paisley Park Records was shut down by Warner Bros. Records in 1994. Though the 1994 c ...

under a renewed license to

Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...

, marking the second collaboration of both parties since 1995's ''

The Gold Experience ''The Gold Experience'' is the seventeenth studio album by American singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Prince. It was credited to his stage name at the time, an unpronounceable symbol (shown on the album cover), also known as ...

''. Prince released the album ''

Plectrumelectrum ''Plectrumelectrum'' is the thirty-sixth studio album by American recording artist Prince, and first (and only) to feature his backing band 3rdeyegirl. It was released on September 26, 2014 by NPG Records under a renewed license to Warner Bros. ...

'', recorded with his touring band 3rdeyegirl, simultaneously.

Commercial performance

''Art Official Age'' debuted at number five on the ''Billboard'' 200 and sold 51,000 copies in its first week. In its second week of sales, the album dropped to number 22 on the chart, selling 15,000 copies, bringing the total to 66,000 copies.

Critical reception

''Art Official Age'' received generally positive reviews from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...

. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 70, based on 24 reviews. In his review for the ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'',

Greg Kot Greg Kot (born March 3, 1957) is an American music journalist and author. From 1990 until 2020, Kot was the rock music critic at the ''Chicago Tribune'', where he covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and busines ...

said that it is "a more substantial and stranger album" than ''

''. Randall Roberts of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' called it "an exquisite Prince R&B album", while ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

''s Neil McCormick said it is "a slick, seductive electro funk sci-fi concept album".

Kitty Empire Kitty Empire is the pen name of a British writer and music critic, currently writing for ''The Observer''. Early life Empire says that she was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1970 and brought up in Canada, Italy and Egypt before arriving in Britai ...

was favorable toward Prince's use of digital production in her review for ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' and called it "a far better album than you'd dare hope from the latterday Prince". ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' magazine's Kenneth Partridge said Prince is "funnier, sexier, and more self-aware than he's been in ages" and that the album is his most creative since the 1990s. In a less enthusiastic review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

Stephen Thomas Erlewine Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance writer, occ ...

wrote that ''Art Official Age'' is a "full-fledged R&B album" in the vein of Prince's work with the

New Power Generation The New Power Generation, also known as The NPG, was the backing band of musician Prince from 1990 to 2013. They were replaced by 3rdeyegirl as his backing band in 2013. In 2015, the New Power Generation reunited as Prince's backing band for ...

, but some of his "modernization feels a bit ham-fisted". '' Q'' magazine was more critical and dismissed it as "an overlong, pan-generic concept album", while

Jon Pareles Jon Pareles (born October 25, 1953) is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of ''The New York Times''.The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' said its songs lack memorable melodies despite the "musicianly ingenuity" of their production. Pareles added that it abandons the concept established by the album's first few songs and

interlude Interlude may refer to: *a short play or, in general, any representation between parts of a larger stage production *''Entr'acte'', a piece of music performed between acts of a theatrical production *a section in a movement of a musical piece, se ...

s, which have Prince "waking up from suspended animation 45 years from now".

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

cited "

Breakfast Can Wait "Breakfast Can Wait" is a song by American recording artist Prince. The single was released on February 5, 2013 on his website 3rdEyeGirl.com and was re-released on 3rdEyeTunes.com on August 17, 2013. The accompanying artwork for the single featu ...

" and "FunknRoll" as highlights in his review for ''

Cuepoint Medium is an American online publishing platform developed by Evan Williams and launched in August 2012. It is owned by A Medium Corporation. The platform is an example of social journalism, having a hybrid collection of amateur and professio ...

'', facetiously remarking, "our greatest composer-performer of romantic nu-funk erotica wakes up 40 years later wishing he was

Janelle Monáe Janelle Monáe Robinson (; born December 1, 1985) is an American singer, rapper and actress. She is signed to Atlantic Records, as well as to her own imprint, the Wondaland Arts Society. Monáe has received eight Grammy Award nominations. Mon� ...

Track listing

Notes * All track titles are stylized in all uppercase, except for affirmation I & II & affirmation III.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2014 albums Prince (musician) albums Albums produced by Prince (musician) Concept albums NPG Records albums Warner Records albums