Art Official Age

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Art Official Age
Prince's studio album

Publication
(s)

September 26, 2014

admission

2013-2014

Label (s) NPG Records / Warner Bros. Records

Format (s)

Double LP, CD, download

Genre (s)

R&B , electronic dance music , funk , pop music , soul

Title (number)

13

running time

53:21

occupation All songs were produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince . His band members added the following to the recordings:
  • 3rdEyeGirl and HC I II III - contributions not defined
  • Marissa Jack (aka: The Golden Hippie) - Backing Vocals in Art Official Cage
  • Stringenius - String instruments in Art Official Cage , Breakdown , The Gold Standard , Way Back Home , Affirmation III
  • Lianne La Havas (aka: Charlotte Ann Telepathy) - Backing Vocals in Clouds , Affirmation I & II , Way Back Home , Affirmation III
  • Andy Allo - Backing Vocals in Breakdown , What It Feels Like , Time
  • Mila J - looped vocals in U Know
  • Delilah (aka: Paloma Ayana) - Backing Vocals in Way Back Home , Affirmation III
  • Michael B. Nelson - string instruments producer
  • Prince, Joshua Welton, Chris James - mixdown

production

Prince , Joshua Welton (co-producer)

Studio (s)

Paisley Park Studio ( Chanhassen )

chronology
20th
(2010) 		Art Official Age HITnRUN Phase One
(2015)
Single releases
3rd September 2013 Breakfast Can Wait
April 18, 2014 Breakdown

Art official age ( English for Official Art Age ) is the 37th studio album of the US musician Prince . It was released on 26 September 2014 - in parallel with his 36th studio album PlectrumElectrum - at the label of Warner Bros. Records / NPG Records and after four years of his first studio album since the 20 th of the year of 2010.

Art Official Age's music falls into the genres of R&B , electronic dance music , funk , soul and pop music . Guest singers include Andy Allo and Lianne La Havas . Music critics rated the album mostly positive. From a commercial point of view, Art Official Age was able to reach the top ten in some countries, but not achieve gold or platinum status internationally. A tour for the album completed Prince not.

Emergence

Prince was already from June 25, 1977 to December 31, 1999 with the major label Warner Bros. Records under contract. During this time he released the commercially successful albums 1999 (1982), Purple Rain (1984), Batman (1989) and Diamonds and Pearls (1991), among others . In 1993, however, there was a dispute between him and the recording company , so that Prince dropped his stage name from June 7, 1993 to May 16, 2000 and instead carried an unpronounceable symbol as a pseudonym . During this time he was often referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince".

On April 18, 2014, Warner Bros. Records announced in a press release that they had reached an agreement with Prince and that they were working with him again. According to Warner, he also got back all copyrights to songs he had recorded for the label; previously Warner owned the rights. Ultimately, Prince only signed a one-year deal with Warner Bros. Records for 2014.

Four of the 13 songs from the Art Official Age album were recorded by Prince in 2013; Breakdown could be heard on the PA system on January 19, before a Prince concert began in Minneapolis , Minnesota . Breakfast Can Wait you could on February 5 via Prince ' website 3rdEyeGirl.com download and What It Feels Like was on July 11 as a stream over 3rdEyeGirl TV to hear. Prince played the original version of Funknroll on August 4, 2013 at a live concert in Stockholm . He recorded all the songs on the Art Official Age album in his Paisley Park Studio in Chanhassen , Minnesota.

The album was co-produced by Joshua Aaron Michael Welton (born October 21, 1990), the husband of 3rdEyeGirl drummer Hannah Ford-Welton.

Design of the cover

The CD is in a fold-out digipak . The front cover shows a picture of Prince's upper body, who wears an afro look and oversized round-glass sunglasses. These sunglasses consist of a frame with three lenses, two above the eyes and one at the level of the forehead. Prince also wears a gold-colored vest and underneath a white turtleneck sweater . There are also four records in the background. The tracklist of the songs by Art Official Age is printed on the inside cover. There is no booklet with lyrics .

music

Art Official Age's music falls into the genres of R&B , electronic dance music , funk , soul and pop music . Guest singers include Andy Allo and Lianne La Havas . The album cover reads, among other things, "featuring The Golden Hippie, Charlotte Ann Telepathy, Paloma Ayana"; The Golden Hippie is a pseudonym of the American singer Marissa Jack, Charlotte Ann Telepathy is a pseudonym of Lianne La Havas and Paloma Ayana is the British singer Paloma Ayana Stoecker (* 1990), who is also known under the name Delilah. For the first time in his career, Prince cooperated with the string orchestra STRINGenius. In previous years he had worked with Clare Fischer instead , but the latter died in 2012 at the age of 83.

The first track from the album is called Art Official Ca ge . Why Prince didn't call it Art Official A ge is not known. Breakdown was released on April 18, 2014 under the title The Breakdown as a download. Why Prince left out the article "The" on the album is also not known.

U Know contains samples from the song Blinded (2012) by Japollonia (* 1983), also known under the name Mila J. At the age of 7, she appeared in Prince's 1991 music video of Diamonds and Pearls . The piece Affirmation I & II is a monologue given by Lianne La Havas. While La Havas speaks the monologue, string instruments can be heard in the background. The original version of Funknroll is available on the album PlectrumElectrum .

List of titles and publications

No. song author length
01 Art Official Cage Prince 3:41
02 Clouds (featuring Lianne La Havas ) Prince 4:34
03 Breakdown Prince 4:04
04th The Gold Standard Prince 5:53
05 U Know (featuring Mila J) Prince 3:56
06th Breakfast Can Wait Prince 3:54
07th This could be us Prince 5:12
08th What It Feels Like (featuring Andy Allo ) Prince 3:53
09 Affirmation I & II (featuring Lianne La Havas) Prince 0:40
010 Way Back Home (feat. Lianne La Havas) Prince 3:05
011 Funknroll (Remix) Prince 4:07
012 Time (featuring Andy Allo) Prince 6:49
013 Affirmation III (featuring Lianne La Havas) Prince 3:27

Art Official Age was released on September 26, 2014 in Germany and most of Europe, in Great Britain the album was released on September 29 and in the USA on September 30, 2014. The album is available as a double album on vinyl , as a compact disc and as a download .

Single releases

Two singles were released from the album: Breakfast Can Wait was released a year before the album was released on September 3, 2013 and was only available as a download. On October 24th the song was also available on the EP The Breakfast Experience , also only available as a download. Apart from the single version, which is identical to the album version, four remixes by Breakfast Can Wait can be found on the EP .

The second single, Breakdown , was released on April 18, 2014 , also only available as a download. On August 28, 2015, eleven months after the album was released, the song This Could Be Us was released in a remix version as This Could B Us as a download single, which is 4:11 minutes long and on Prince's 38th studio album HITnRUN Phase One (2015) can be found.

Clouds was released exclusively in Europe as a promo single and was able to place itself at number 182 in the French charts for one week in August 2014.

Music videos

Prince produced two music videos for songs by Art Official Age . On October 11, 2013, the video for Breakfast Can Wait and director was Danielle Curiel (born December 20, 1994). Prince hired Maya and Nandy McLean - known as The Twinz, who were members of The New Power Generation in 2007 - to contact the then 19-year-old Curiel so that she could direct. Curiel can also be seen in the music video, while Prince does not appear.

On November 18, 2014, Warner Bros. Records released a music video for the song Funknroll (remix) . The company Gupta Media was commissioned by the label and the "Prince team" to create a video with the lyrics of the song. Gupta Media created a music video in psychedelic art that shows various photos of Prince and 3rdEyeGirl in moving images .

reception

Press

Art Official Age received positive reviews from the international press; for example, Billboard's Kenneth Partridge distributed four stars out of five and wrote, among other things, that Art Official Age was the most imaginative Prince album since the 1990s. Compared with the albums 20th (2010), MPLSound (2009) and Planet Earth (2007), was art official age a mix of new wave - radio , soulful psychedelic rock and pop music of the modern era. Evan Sawdey from the online magazine PopMatters gave seven stars out of ten and Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic gave them three out of five stars. The US magazine The New Yorker praised art official age as Prince '' zusammenhängendstes and satisfying album in over a decade "and the US magazine Rolling Stone chose art official age , behind the album LP1 of FKA twigs , No. 2 in the best R&B albums of 2014.

André Boße from Musikexpress distributed four and a half stars out of five and wrote that there were “great things” to hear on the album and that it was a pleasure to hear them. Prince's head voice is also "absolutely intact". David Maurer from laut.de was of a similar opinion and headlined The Purple One stronger than it has been in a long time . For example, the song Breakdown is one of the best Prince ballads of the last few decades. Maurer gave the album four stars out of five. Michael Loesl from Welt.de wrote that Art Official Age was "the surprisingly progressive determination of the position of an artist who was apparently too prematurely included in the 'legacy artists' caste."

Werner Herpell from Stern.de was more cautious about praise and concluded that Art Official Age was a solid, but rarely really exciting album.

After Prince's death in April 2016, the music journalists Albert Koch and Thomas Weiland from the German music magazine Musikexpress reviewed the album Art Official Age and gave it four out of six possible stars. They wrote, among other things, " Breakfast Can Wait and the inspired Juicy Fruit copy Time leave no doubt about the continuation of the royal abilities in 2014".

Charts

Charts Top ranking Weeks
Chart placements
Germany (GfK) Germany (GfK) 18th (5 weeks) 5
Austria (Ö3) Austria (Ö3) 8th (3 weeks) 3
Switzerland (IFPI) Switzerland (IFPI) 4th (7 weeks) 7th
United Kingdom (OCC) United Kingdom (OCC) 8th (4 weeks) 4th
United States (Billboard) United States (Billboard) 5 (10 weeks) 10

The single Breakfast Can Wait could not place in international charts. In the French single hit parade, Funknroll reached place 113, Breakdown place 172 and Clouds and U Know place 182 each.

literature

  • Jason Draper: Prince - Life & Times (Revised & Updated Edition). Chartwell Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-7858-3497-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Prince's Art Official Age album cover , Warner Bros. Records / NPG Records, 2014
  2. ↑ a b Art Official Age. In: Princevault.com. January 8, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Draper (2016), pp. 198-199.
  4. ↑ Breakdown. In: Princevault.com. March 10, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Breakfast Can Wait. In: Princevault.com. October 20, 2016, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  6. ↑ What It Feels Like. In: Princevault.com. February 27, 2016, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Funknroll. In: Princevault.com. October 20, 2016, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Joshua Aaron Michael Welton: Joshua Aaron Michael Weltonn. In: Facebook.com. 2017, accessed on June 22, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Joshua AM Welton: Joshua AM Welton. In: Twitter.com. February 12, 2017, accessed June 22, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Miles Marshall Lewis: Is Producing Prince Impossible? Ask Joshua Welton (interview). In: Ebony.com. August 28, 2015, accessed June 22, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Prince's Art Official Age album cover , Warner Bros. Records / NPG Records, 2014
  12. ↑ STRINGenius: Discography. In: Stringenius.com. 2017, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Mila J Talks Prince Sampling Her On His Latest Release 'U Know'. In: Musictimes.com. September 6, 2014, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  14. ^ Art Official Age. In: Princevault.com. October 11, 2017, accessed February 20, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Breakfast Can Wait. In: Princevault.com. December 3, 2016, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Single: The Breakdown. In: Princevault.com. February 27, 2016, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  17. ^ This Could B Us. In: Princevault.com. February 27, 2017, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  18. ↑ Clouds. In: Princevault.com. February 19, 2018, accessed March 20, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Prince has released a new single on the internet. In: Derstandard.at. October 15, 2013, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Breakfast Can Wait. In: Princevault.com. February 27, 2016, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  21. ^ Prince - Funknroll. In: Guptamedia.com. 2017, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  22. ↑ Kenneth Partridge: Album Review: Prince's First Two Albums In Four Years Are a Mixed Bag. In: Billboard.com. September 30, 2014, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  23. ↑ Evan Sawdey: Prince - Art Official Age / Prince & 3rdeyegirl: PLECTRUMELECTRUM. In: Popmatters.com. September 30, 2014, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  24. ↑ Stephen Thomas Erlewine: Prince - Art Official Age. In: Allmusic.com. September 30, 2014, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  25. ↑ Draper (2016), p. 201.
  26. ↑ 20 Best R&B Albums of 2014. In: Rollingstone.com. 2014, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  27. ↑ André Bossé: Prince - art official age. In: Musikexpress.de. September 26, 2014, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  28. ↑ David Maurer: Prince - Art Official Age. In: laut.de. September 26, 2014, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  29. ↑ Michael Loesl: Prince - one-man resistance movement of pop. In: Welt.de. September 30, 2014, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  30. ↑ Werner Herpell: Prince releases albums with the old 'slave driver'. In: Stern.de. September 26, 2014, accessed March 24, 2017 .
  31. ^ ME editors: From the big Prince special - an overview of all albums. In: Musikexpress.de. May 22, 2016. Retrieved March 24, 2017 .
  32. ↑ Prince. officialcharts.de, accessed on February 16, 2019 .
  33. ↑ Prince. austriancharts.at, accessed on February 16, 2019 .
  34. ↑ Prince. hitparade.ch, accessed on February 16, 2019 .
  35. ↑ Prince. officialcharts.com, accessed February 16, 2019 .
  36. ^ Prince - Chart History. billboard.com, accessed February 16, 2019 .
  37. ^ Prince - Art Official Age. 2019, accessed February 21, 2019 .
Prince
Studio albums

For You (1978) • Prince (1979) • Dirty Mind (1980) • Controversy (1981) • 1999 (1982) / 1999 Deluxe (2019) • Purple Rain (1984) / Purple Rain Deluxe (2017) • Around the World in a Day (1985) • Parade (1986) • Sign "☮" the Times (1987) • Lovesexy (1988) • Batman (1989) • Graffiti Bridge (1990) • Diamonds and Pearls (1991) • Love Symbol (1992) • Come (1994) • Black Album (1994) • The Gold Experience (1995) • Chaos and Disorder (1996) • Emancipation (1996) • Crystal Ball (1998) • The Truth (1998) • The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale ( 1999) • Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999) • The Rainbow Children (2001) • One Nite Alone… (2002) • Xpectation (download album - 2003) • NEWS (2003) • The Chocolate Invasion (download album - 2004) • The Slaughterhouse (Download album - 2004) • Musicology (2004) • 3121 (2006) • Planet Earth (2007) • Lotusflow3r (2009) • MPLSound (2009) • 20Ten (2010) • PlectrumElectrum (2014) • Art Official Age (2014) • HITnRUN Phase One (2015) • HITnRUN Phase Two (2015) • Piano & A Microphone 1983 (2018) • Originals (2019)

Mix tapes

NYC (1997)

Extended plays

The Scandalous Sex Suite (1989) • New Power Generation Remixes (1990) • Gett Off Remix EP (1991) • Cream Remixes (1991) • My Name Is Prince Remixes (1992) • 7 Remixes (1992) • The Beautiful Experience (1994 ) • Letitgo Remixes (1994) • Space Remixes (1994) • Eye Hate U Remixes (1995) • 1999 - The New Master (1999) • The Greatest Romance Ever Sold Remixes (1999) • The Breakfast Experience (2013)

Remix albums

His Majesty's Pop Life / The Purple Mix Club (1985) • The Versace Experience (Prelude 2 Gold) (1995) • Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic (2001)

Live albums

One Nite Alone… Live! (2002) • One Nite Alone… The Aftershow: It Ain't Over! (2002) • C-Note (2003) • Indigo Nights (2008) • Live in Detroit - November 30, 1982 (2019)

Soundtracks

Purple Rain (1984) • Under the Cherry Moon (1986) • Batman (1989) • Graffiti Bridge (1990) • Girl 6 (1996)

Compilation albums

The Hits / The B-Sides (1993) • The Hits 1 (1993) • The Hits 2 (1993) • The Very Best of Prince (2001) • Ultimate (2006) • 4Ever (2016) • Anthology: 1995–2010 ( 2018)

Tours

Prince tour (1979–80) • Fire It Up tour by Rick James (Prince as opening act - 1980) • Dirty Mind tour (1980–81) • Controversy tour (1981–82) • 1999 tour (1982–83) • Purple Rain Tour (1984–85) • Hit-N-Run Tour (1986) • Parade Tour (1986) • Sign-o'-the-Times-Tour (1987) • Lovesexy -Tour (1988-89) • Nude-Tour (1990) • Diamonds-and-Pearls-Tour (1992) • Act-I-Show (1993) • Act-II-Show (1993) • The Ultimate Live Experience (1995 ) • Japan ′96 (1996) • Love-4-One-Another-Charities-Tour 1997 (1997) • Jam-of-the-Year-Tour (1997-98) • Newpower-Soul-Tour / Newpower-Soul- Festival-Tour (1998) • Hit-N-Run-Tour (2000–01) • One-Nite-Alone-Tour (2002) • World-Tour 2003 (2003) • Musicology Live 2004ever (2004) • Per4ming Live 3121 in Las Vegas (2006–07) • 21 Nights in London: The Earth Tour (2007) • 20Ten Tour (2010) • Welcome 2 America Tour (2010–12) • Live Out Loud Tour (2013 ) • Hit-N-Run-Tour (2014) • Hit-N-Run-Tour 2015 (2015) • Piano & A Microphone (2016)