Clouds is good song. One of the better songs he's released in the last 10 years. the rest of the CD..meh

dartluv5 said:

Like I have said before, I think both of the new albums are fantastic, and in my opinion the best albums P has released since "The Gold Experience" .. Honestly, after several listens, "Art Official Age" may be in my top 10 Prince albums..

I have shown a few friends of mine (I'm in college) both the album, and they loved it. So much that two of them actually said they are going to go out and buy it.

Has anyone tried to speed up or do some audio trickery on Art Official Cage to figure out if it's Prince rapping? I guess it's definitely him speaking at the end of The Gold Standard (after the bubbles), not sure about AOC.

at this point I'm willing to accept that AOA has:

-1 great track: Way Back Home

-3 good (not great) songs just as good as any good (not great) song he has released after Lovesexy: The Gold Standard, Breakfast Can Wait, Breakdown

-3 decent modern R&B tracks: Time, Clouds and This Could Be Us

the rest of the album is incredibly weak, including Art Official Cage, a disappointing opening which could have been so much better-meaner-harder...

at this point I'm willing to accept that AOA has:

-1 great track: Way Back Home

-3 good (not great) songs just as good as any good (not great) song he has released after Lovesexy: The Gold Standard, Breakfast Can Wait, Breakdown

-3 decent modern R&B tracks: Time, Clouds and This Could Be Us

the rest of the album is incredibly weak, including Art Official Cage, a disappointing opening which could have been so much better-meaner-harder...

robertgeorgeakabob said:

JoeTyler said:

at this point I'm willing to accept that AOA has:

-1 great track: Way Back Home

-3 good (not great) songs just as good as any good (not great) song he has released after Lovesexy: The Gold Standard, Breakfast Can Wait, Breakdown

-3 decent modern R&B tracks: Time, Clouds and This Could Be Us

the rest of the album is incredibly weak, including Art Official Cage, a disappointing opening which could have been so much better-meaner-harder...

[ U love it. Just admit it. Embrace the power of the air horn.

uh, no, 3/5 at best

JoeTyler said:

SanDiegoFunkDaddy said:

Clouds is good song. One of the better songs he's released in the last 10 years. the rest of the CD..meh

yeah, same here........I like Clouds but only until that lady starts singing and that ruins it for me

rest of the album for me ranks right down there with his worst ever

kinda feel bad for him

Really diggin both cd's and listening to them all day. Its been a long time comin' that I wanted to give a new Prince cd repeated listens and not skip around too much.

My question is- how the hell did "Art Official Cage" make it as the opening track? In this digital age, you have to hit him hard and early or you will lose them. That song is weak with a capital W.

He used to have incredible opening songs on his albums- Wanna Be your Lover, Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, Let's Go Crazy, Sign O the Times, etc.

Artificial Cage might be the weakest opening track since "Thunder!"

JoeTyler said:

at this point I'm willing to accept that AOA has:

Oh, you're back?

JoeTyler said:

at this point I'm willing to accept that AOA has:

-1 great track: Way Back Home

-3 good (not great) songs just as good as any good (not great) song he has released after Lovesexy: The Gold Standard, Breakfast Can Wait, Breakdown

-3 decent modern R&B tracks: Time, Clouds and This Could Be Us

the rest of the album is incredibly weak, including Art Official Cage, a disappointing opening which could have been so much better-meaner-harder...

Welcome to the Art Official Experience.

Aerogram said:

JoeTyler said:

at this point I'm willing to accept that AOA has:

-1 great track: Way Back Home

-3 good (not great) songs just as good as any good (not great) song he has released after Lovesexy: The Gold Standard, Breakfast Can Wait, Breakdown

-3 decent modern R&B tracks: Time, Clouds and This Could Be Us

the rest of the album is incredibly weak, including Art Official Cage, a disappointing opening which could have been so much better-meaner-harder...

Welcome to the Art Official Experience.

whatever, I still enjoy the 3rd EG album a lot more

I love both albums and am listening to them a lot, but PE has a slight edge over AOA for me. Certainly listening to PE more but love them both.

Marco81 said:

Has anyone tried to speed up or do some audio trickery on Art Official Cage to figure out if it's Prince rapping? I guess it's definitely him speaking at the end of The Gold Standard (after the bubbles), not sure about AOC.

It sounds like Prince's voice, but a bit altered. A part of me wants it to be Tony M just for the lols. I guess a proper booklet would have helped. While we're talking about his voices, I would consider it Camille on FNR, as opposed to just your generic sped-up voice at the end of BCW. His Camille voice has a certain badass 'tude.

I'm notorious for talking trash every release this past decade. He shut my ass up with AOA. I don't have shit to say except turn it up.

3rdeyedude said:

SanDiegoFunkDaddy said:

Clouds is good song. One of the better songs he's released in the last 10 years. the rest of the CD..meh

yeah, same here........I like Clouds but only until that lady starts singing and that ruins it for me

rest of the album for me ranks right down there with his worst ever

kinda feel bad for him

Just goes to show how one man's trash is another's treasure when it comes to Prince. Many on this board, including myself, have commented that Cloud's best moments begin at that point.

JoeTyler said:

at this point I'm willing to accept that AOA has:

-1 great track: Way Back Home

-3 good (not great) songs just as good as any good (not great) song he has released after Lovesexy: The Gold Standard, Breakfast Can Wait, Breakdown

-3 decent modern R&B tracks: Time, Clouds and This Could Be Us

the rest of the album is incredibly weak, including Art Official Cage, a disappointing opening which could have been so much better-meaner-harder...

So, from your own mouth, that's SEVEN "decent, good to great" tracks out of ELEVEN (not counting the segues) and your assertion is still that the album is bland shit? 7/11 is a pretty decent hit-to-miss ratio for...well...anything, let alone an entire album full of songs in a singles-driven age and most especially by modern Prince standards.

Sounds like it's growing on you.

Marco81 said:

Has anyone tried to speed up or do some audio trickery on Art Official Cage to figure out if it's Prince rapping? I guess it's definitely him speaking at the end of The Gold Standard (after the bubbles), not sure about AOC.

It's not him.

If I had to describe The Gold Standard in three words: upper echelon groove

-

Thank you and good night!

MugginsXO said:

Here’s the thing though: the best music being made today is being made in R&B and in Rap, with both genres very often overlapping. Somebody mentioned Kanye West a few pages back as being one of the most important producers of the last decade and I absolutely agree. If R. Kelly brought Rap to R&B, Kanye brought R&B to Rap. The unsightly cultural and genre limitations imposed were greatly reduced by Kanye West. I don’t think you’d see people like ASAP Rocky doing love tracks like Fashion Killa without Kanye. I don’t think Kendrick Lamar would be dropping a beautiful chorus on a song called Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe.

Solid points, but there are certainly a lot of great artists preceding Kanye who brought R&B to rap. Nearly a generation ago, producers like Pete Rock and J Dilla (who actually produced his share of R&B for Janet, Badu et al.) were bringing R&B flair to hip-hop without compromising the sound. For that matter, so did RZA. Artists like Brand Nubian and Heavy D did as well.

But I see and must agree with your point; Kanye has shaped the sound of hip-hop in the 21st century and many artists have followed his lead.

One of the reasons why I really like Art Official Age is because of how he has started to engage music that is happening now. Lianna La Haves is on the record: a new, vital musician who is not just a bloody protégé. She is her own thinking person, making great music that people actually care about in 2014. This is a great sign. It also helps that Clouds is a killer track. It was likewise brilliant to see Prince pop up on Janelle Monae’s last album to help the track. Not to dominate it, not to insist on control but to help the album. Seeing Kendrick Lamar do something with Prince gives me some hope too that he is actually engaging with the world and not shutting it out to live happily in his purple bubble. Hell even though I wasn’t crazy about the song, his duet with Zooey Deschanel can go in that category too.

I completely agree, and great post overall!

[Edited 10/9/14 13:30pm]

"Keep breaking me down, down, downnnnn
Keep breaking me down, down, downnnn"

herb4 said:

Marco81 said:

Has anyone tried to speed up or do some audio trickery on Art Official Cage to figure out if it's Prince rapping? I guess it's definitely him speaking at the end of The Gold Standard (after the bubbles), not sure about AOC.

It's not him.

On Art Official Cage you mean? Any chance you cna post the sped up vocals somewhere?

Marco81 said:

herb4 said:

It's not him.

On Art Official Cage you mean? Any chance you cna post the sped up vocals somewhere?

It's Prince, 100% not a single doubt.

No need to post it, just download some free audio editing software like Audacity and speed it up 18-20%

Well after 2 weeks I am still playing this thing to death. I can not get enough of it. Its the Prince version of crack. We are looking at something that's going to threaten the 80s albums here. Its that bloody good. I was caught singing clouds in public today and rather than hate the talking, the Mr Nelson part is hilarious, even funnier is "The drugs we gave you have left you in suspended animation for quite a while, 45 years, Mr Nelson - bleep bloop blip" or words to that effect.

.

All of the songs are great and there are still no skippers. U know and this is what it feels like is great. I feel you could mesh Art Official Cage and Clouds into one jam and join Uknow, This could be us and This is what it feels like into some huge seduction suite. I also like the idea someone else suggested of joining all the Affirmations and Way back home together. Its poetry for the ears.

.

Maybe Prince does not want to promote, as he just wants to present it to the hardcore fans who have been waiting for a Postscript to the 80s.

.

I don't listen to Plectrum Electrum any more (Maybe once a day), but this has been at least 3 or 4 times a day. Normally I get over the new albums in a couple of weeks or days for ones like 20Ten and Musicology and go back to 80s and 90s Prince, bootlegs or whatever, but I just can't get enough of AOA. This album is like musical crack for me.

Adorecream said:

Well after 2 weeks I am still playing this thing to death. I can not get enough of it. Its the Prince version of crack. We are looking at something that's going to threaten the 80s albums here. Its that bloody good. I was caught singing clouds in public today and rather than hate the talking, the Mr Nelson part is hilarious, even funnier is "The drugs we gave you have left you in suspended animation for quite a while, 45 years, Mr Nelson - bleep bloop blip" or words to that effect.

.

All of the songs are great and there are still no skippers. U know and this is what it feels like is great. I feel you could mesh Art Official Cage and Clouds into one jam and join Uknow, This could be us and This is what it feels like into some huge seduction suite. I also like the idea someone else suggested of joining all the Affirmations and Way back home together. Its poetry for the ears.

.

Maybe Prince does not want to promote, as he just wants to present it to the hardcore fans who have been waiting for a Postscript to the 80s.

.

I don't listen to Plectrum Electrum any more (Maybe once a day), but this has been at least 3 or 4 times a day. Normally I get over the new albums in a couple of weeks or days for ones like 20Ten and Musicology and go back to 80s and 90s Prince, bootlegs or whatever, but I just can't get enough of AOA. This album is like musical crack for me.

Adorecream said:

Well after 2 weeks I am still playing this thing to death.

.

Same here! AOA has legs. I think Prince is over promoting stuff. These aren't the ol' WB days where he was a team player. It seems like he just wants to release his music (whenever), play shows and of course, keep recording music we may or may not ever hear. AOA has me very excited for his next album, I know that much.

I also have AOA on constant rotation. I notice that I never start it anywhere but the beginning and always let it run through. It feels like it has to be played that way. I haven't gone back (and back and back) to a Prince album like this since Lovesexy. I said AOA was a classic from the first time I heard it and I only believe it more now. To me, this stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Prince's run of 80s albums. It's brilliant!