Studio Album · No. 30
Art Official Age Songwriting Credits by Prince
Produced by Prince, Joshua Welton
Holds writing credit on 13 of 13 tracks
Authorship Breakdown 13 / 13 documented
Scored across the 13 tracks with documented writers, by whether Prince carries a lyricist or composer credit.
Share of the 13 tracks where a band member is credited, by role.
By the Numbers
Art Official Age is fully authored by Prince, who wrote and performed the bulk of the record himself while Joshua Welton co-produced. It arrived the same day as Plectrumelectrum, his band album with 3rdeyegirl, marking Prince's return to Warner Bros. after regaining control of his master recordings. As one of the last solo studio albums released in his lifetime before his 2016 death, it pairs his self-played funk and R&B with a loose concept built around the spoken Affirmation interludes.
Released September 26, 2014, through NPG Records under a renewed licensing agreement with Warner Bros. Records, Art Official Age was Prince's thirty-seventh studio album and appeared simultaneously with Plectrumelectrum, recorded with his touring band 3rdeyegirl. Prince co-produced the album with Joshua Welton, with recording spanning 2011 through 2014, and all tracks were written by Prince, with guest appearances from Lianne La Havas, Andy Allo, and Delilah. The album's contemporary R&B and electro-funk sound is framed by a loose science-fiction concept in which Prince awakens from suspended animation forty-five years in the future, though critics noted the narrative thread was not consistently sustained across the tracklist. Metacritic scored it 70/100 from twenty-four reviews, with praise describing it as a far better album than might be expected and noting Prince as funnier, sexier, and more self-aware than in recent years. Commercially it debuted at number 5 on the Billboard 200 with 51,000 first-week copies sold and reached number 1 on both the UK R&B Albums chart and the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.