KingSausage said:

I agree, AOC is self indulgent crap which makes it hard to enjoy. All those stupid looped in samples and the sounds of a guy being waterboarded. NEXT!!!!!

I struggle the listen to "Art Official Cage". There are parts that are cool but I think it's a musical representation of the "Feedback loop" Prince talked about in interviews.

Starting with Clouds works for me. I get AOC. It's just hard to get through time after time. Gotta start somewhere else after a few listens that way.

Here's the way I listen to the CDs AOA and PlecElec:

1. Affirmation I & II (Cool concept album intro stuff here. Short and sweet, too.)

2. Way Back Home (I like to imagine he/AOA is saying - through this track order - that he is finding his way back home - to the Funk!(nRoll), his roots. Queue FunknRoll)

3. FunknRoll (THE Jam. How folks don't know this is the jam I don't know.)

4. Time (So FunkSoulful, unique with bass leading the way. Just press repeat on this one, too)

5. Clouds (THE Jam - did I say that already

6. Breakfast Can Wait (How can you NOT love this song. So perfectly executed vocally, lyrically, and it's soulful/funky. Love the line: "You can't leave a black man in this state.'')

7. Breakdown (Love it. Give up dat live version, tho, blood. #greedy1)

8. This Could Be Us (Love it. Just seems to keep growing on me.)

9. U Know (Love it, though it's the least smooth lyrically. Love it vocally, tho)

10. What It Feels Like (Love it. See "This Could Be Us.")

11. Affirmation III (Love me a concept album)

12. Stop This Train (Love it. Can't seem to get enough. Best Ford Welton vocals)

13. Anotherlove (Drags a tad for some reason, but still strong)

14. Boy Trouble (Crazy tricky rap intoxicates every time)

15. Tictactoe (Love the mood and the lyric change at the very end).

I haven't particularly paid it attention to myself, but I think I tend to skip AOC too.

I sort of like AOC, but starting the album with that thing just feels like getting hit in the head with a frying pan.

I tend to go into "Time" directly after "This Could B Us" too. "What It Feels Like" drags and "Way Back Home" I've found sort of naive and a bit too much to listen to too many times. I''d like to forget about the existence of that FNR remix altogether.

Militant said:

I agree with Matty, I love AOC because it's total purple madness and nobody else would make anything that crazy.

However - I've noticed when playing the album to people, that a lot of them don't like that song. I think they just don't get it, it goes over their head a little bit.

Nonsense, there´s nothing special about the track.

It mixes a few commercial housesounds from the 90´s and not in a good way.

It doesn´t go over people´s head, it´s just not a good song.

Start with Clouds I say

V10LETBLUES said:

Aerogram said:

Here's what you do: from now on, you consider Art Official Cage a long Affirmation.

It's Prince musically zooming through a couple of poppy styles, each of them playfully delivered tongue in cheek, winking at the world and its expectations toward "pop stars", before getting to the crux of the matter : the actual album.,

So I don't blame you for starting with Clouds, but I find the song even better if I first listen to the "Humorous First Affirmation".

[Edited 1/30/15 11:07am]

Bob George is humorous. Scarlet Pussy is humurous. I never skip those. They are fun and original. A lot of making excuses for this album. I get it. I WANT to love each and every new Prince album, I am biased for Prince myself. But we also have to honest. A lot of folks are lowering the bar too low because we love Prince. It's just too amateurish an album to be comeing from someone like Prince. [Edited 1/30/15 12:42pm]

So people who like AOA are just not being honest because you have personally established the album is substandard and deemed that Age was Officially not "Art"?

For many, it's the first album they like in 10, 15 or 20 years, so your theory that it's just people lowering their standards because they absolutely want to love a Prince record is not very astute.

I skip AOC and go straight to Clouds.

IMO, it's an album opener similar to SOTT.

treb said:

Does anybody here know DJ Bobo? He always comes to my mind when I mistakenly listen to AOA. A nightmare...

exactely my point

Giovanni777 said:

I think it fits as an opener. Since most of the album is mid-tempo, it needs to start with a bang. It's goofy, corny, robotic, just like the tracks that follow. Though I think some dancier tracks here and there would blend it in more with the listing.

Journalist Will Hodgkinson 26 Sep 2014:

Prince calls it the feedback loop: that ebbing, shifting morass of shared information, taste and commerce that causes three Hollywood studios to make films about zombies at the same time, online sensations explode and die out in days and thousands of bands all come up with the same sound at once.

Prince is not in the feedback loop and he hasn’t been for a long time. He’s the music industry’s remaining equivalent of a silent movie star, its last enigma, raging quietly at the injustice of an era where a lack of musical ability is not a bar to success and there are no secret lives of the rich and famous any more, just a drip-feed of digital high-fives to a few million people on Twitter.

That is AOC. A representation of the "feedback loop" genres fade in and out just as quickly...

"Welcome home class..." in the concept of the album is Prince waking up. That soon fades out when we see what he's confronted with. It shifts between funk, dance, rap, opera, rock, latin probably more. The waterboarding being his nod to the violence that's infested some popular music.

It's goofy and all but it's the setup for "Clouds" where he talks about this modern culture.

[Edited 2/2/15 14:12pm]

love AOC. It stays where it is. In addition to it opening the album P wanted to make, it conceptually sets the tone FOR the album, Liane LaHavas' narration notwithstanding, I think Groovy Potential would've fit somewhere but that's just me

ilo said:

Love AOC! It's bonkers. Clever, ironic, camp and so on. Wish he threw more songs like this out into the world

Same here!

KingSausage said:

....

I was worried when I first heard AOC because it sounded like the kind of music performed by the kind of act that the NFL seems to want to headline the Super Bowl half time show these days. So I originally listened to it only because it sounded important within the context of the album. I thought he was getting away with doing this kind of track by satirizing it and thereby maintaining his credibility by safely keeping his distance from simply "jumping on the bandwagon," the kind of thing that Frank Zappa so brilliantly did for years with genres like Doo-Wop, Funk, New Wave, etc.

....

But after listening those first few times I then came to realize just how absolutely badass the track is. It IS indeed a tour de force monster of an opening track! I now think it's his most slammin' album opener since "P Control" and before that "My Name is Prince" and "Thunder." Just absolutely brilliant! Only Prince could and would pull something like this off.

....

Bottom line.....there's absolutely no way I would skip AOC....that would be highly ill-advised. I can understand people's aversion to it because I had that same experience at first. But I recommend putting on some headphones, set aside any prejudice you might have to the genre, have a glass of wine or a puff of weed (or both), turn down the lights, and give it a few spins, while also considering the context it has within the album....that context being a critical statement on this type of "artificial" popular music.

....

[Edited 2/3/15 13:56pm]

[Edited 2/3/15 13:57pm]

[Edited 2/3/15 13:59pm]

TheBoneRanger said:

....

I was worried when I first heard AOC because it sounded like the kind of music performed by the kind of act that the NFL seems to want to headline the Super Bowl half time show these days. So I originally listened to it only because it sounded important within the context of the album. I thought he was getting away with doing this kind of track by satirizing it and thereby maintaining his credibility by safely keeping his distance from simply "jumping on the bandwagon," the kind of thing that Frank Zappa so brilliantly did for years with genres like Doo-Wop, Funk, New Wave, etc .

....

But after listening those first few times I then came to realize just how absolutely badass the track is. It IS indeed a tour de force monster of an opening track! I now think it's his most slammin' album opener since "P Control" and before that "My Name is Prince" and "Thunder." Just absolutely brilliant! Only Prince could and would pull something like this off.

....

Bottom line.....there's absolutely no way I would skip AOC....that would be highly ill-advised. I can understand people's aversion to it because I had that same experience at first. But I recommend putting on some headphones, set aside any prejudice you might have to the genre, have a glass of wine or a puff of weed (or both), turn down the lights, and give it a few spins, while also considering the context it has within the album....that context being a critical statement on this type of "artificial" popular music.

....

[Edited 2/3/15 13:56pm]

[Edited 2/3/15 13:57pm]

[Edited 2/3/15 13:59pm]

Bone Ranger, that last sentence sums it all up for me. But i don't think folks on this "fan" site are capable of that. It doesn't fit THEIR expectations or preferences so it must "suck"

KingSausage said:

I agree that it's "purple madness" that only Prince could make. But that's not always a good thing. To me, it's the only weak track on an otherwise stellar album. Why start things off on a weak note? Jump right into Clouds, which continues to kick my ass every time I listen to it, several months on. I don't think AOC is a song one needs to "get." It's not deep or sophisticated. There's barely a song there at all. It's far more of an intro to the textures and themes on the rest of the album. Like an overture in a classic film. I skip that shit too.

Late to the game but I agree. I like the whole record but but the opening track is weak as hell. I might have made a decent "halftime" track, like put in the middle somewhere to break up the slow stuff. Could also be because I hate "club/house music" and it just sounds so...synthetic or something. It makes it too easy for a newbie to dismiss the record and it lacks any sort of "bite".

Like someone else said, it sounds like a Super Bowl halftime show. I might have stuck it after "This Could Be Us" or somewhere in there just to break up the tempo.

[Edited 2/5/15 15:55pm]

AOC goes in his worst of all time bucket - you can pretend it's a smart joke all you want, but it's just a terrible attempt at recapturing his past sound. Clouds is a masterpiece in comparison.

I actually really like Art Official Cage. I put it in the playlist I use for running and it gives me a lift every time it comes up. Sometimes when I'm feeling like I need to take a break and slow to a walk, AOC will come on and I'm like, "Well, I have to run to this."

SquirrelMeat said:

I love AOC. One of my favourites on the album. Its the favourite of both my boys too. I replaced U know with Give Em What They Love and BCW with Fall in love and the album feels fine to me.

I like that idea. I put FIL2N in my tracklisting for the album as well and it flows perfectly. I didn't think about Give em what they love.. might have to give that a try.