ART OFFICIAL AGE

Released on the same day as his funk-rock album with 3RDEYEGIRL, PLECTRUMELECTRUM, ART OFFICIAL AGE is one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums of Prince’s later career. It had been nearly five years since Prince had released an album (2010’s 20Ten, which was never released in retail stores or distributed in the U.S.), and his audience was clearly eager for him to make a comeback: ART OFFICIAL AGE debuted at number 5 on the Billboard 200 and reached number 1 on both the U.K. R&B Albums chart and the U.S. Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

Five singles were released ahead of ART OFFICIAL AGE, starting with “BREAKFAST CAN WAIT” in February of 2013, a year and a half prior to the release of the rest of the album. That single, released on his new website 3rdEyeGirl.com, memorably featured an image from Dave Chappelle’s famous 2004 Prince skit, with Chappelle-as-Prince holding up a plate of pancakes — to the great amusement of the comedian. "That's a Prince judo move right there,” Chappelle said to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. “You make fun of Prince in a sketch and he'll just use you in his album cover.” Additional singles included the soulful ballad “BREAKDOWN” and the imaginative, funky “CLOUDS.”

Although the album features several special guests, ART OFFICIAL AGE is a solo offering from Prince, and it explores all of the various studio techniques that Prince was curious about at the time — from sampling (on “U KNOW,” which contains portions of Mila J’s song “Blinded”) to EDM drops to the spoken-word narration of one of his protégés, Lianne La Havas, whose futuristic storytelling weaves the time-traveling concept of the album together. Paired with the blissful rock of PLECTRUMELECTRUM, it showcases just how hungry Prince was to continue experimenting with new voices, techniques, and styles, even as he was about to enter his fourth decade of making music.