Thread by @dbpmccarthy

I cannot adequately express how honoured I feel to have been asked to participate in the excellent #PrinceTwitterThread Series hosted by @deejayumb and @EdgarKruize, which this time around is focusing on Prince’s superb latter-day album, ART OFFICIAL AGE (2014).

#AOAThread

In this thread, I shall be taking a closer look at the album’s opening track, ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, and exploring the extent to which discerning the mutual relationship exhibited by the track’s musical and lyrical components can aid us in our understanding of the song as a whole.

However, before I begin, I would like to first give a shout out to Chris Lacy (@chrislacy1990), who penned an article entitled “Rediscovering Prince’s Late-Career Gem ‘Art Official Age,’ Two Years On” for Albumism in 2016.

albumism.com/features/redis…

I cannot recommend Chris’s superb piece on the album highly enough, particularly if you are an avowed lover of ART OFFICIAL AGE, and likewise please do take the time to check out the rest of his equally excellent critical work via his Medium page.

chrislacy1990.medium.com

And with that, let us now begin our own in-depth critical exploration of the album’s aforementioned opening track, ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, so without further ado…

“Welcome home, class. You’ve come a long way…”

These threads normally begin proceedings with the contributor in question providing a comprehensive historical account of the conception and recording of their chosen track.

However, when it comes to ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, such an undertaking is not quite so simple.

As is likewise the case with much of the accompanying album, information pertaining to the recording of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ is fairly scant, with Prince Vault surmising that basic tracking presumably took place at Paisley Park Studios in 2014.

princevault.com/index.php?titl…

Similarly, any information regarding the track’s recording personnel also appears to be somewhat thin on the ground, a situation that is ultimately not helped by the album’s distinct lack of any comprehensive accompanying liner notes, outside of the brief credits pictured below.

Featured on the album’s back cover and inner gatefold respectively, the broad nature of these attributions inherently lack the specificity necessary for us to determine on a track by track basis the particular contributions made by those listed members of the recording personnel.

As such, in the absence of any comprehensive information on this point, Prince Vault makes the following (partially speculative) attributions in regards to the track’s recording personnel:

While the nature of the contributions made by Nielsen and The Golden Hippie (stage alias of singer songwriter, Marissa Jack) have largely since been confirmed, the particular instrumental contributions made by either Prince or co-producer, Joshua Welton, remain mostly unknown.

As such, short of being present at Paisley Park at the time of recording, or being privy to hitherto un-recounted eye witness recollections of the period in question, we cannot ascertain with any great authority just when the recording of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ precisely took place.

Nor can we currently determine with certainty the aforementioned specific nature of the instrumental contributions made to the track by either Prince or Welton during this unknown recording period in 2014 at Paisley Park Studios.

Consequently, due to the distinct lack of any authoritative contextual information on either of these points, ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ is a song that actively resists any attempts at presenting an historically thorough and comprehensive account of the track’s ultimate origins.

As such, having sufficiently outlined what little information we possess pertaining to the recording of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, we shall now be setting these contextual concerns to one side and will instead turn our attention towards the track’s musical and lyrical content.

Structurally, ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ belongs to a sub-category of Prince songs that I predominantly like to refer to as ‘Gear Shift Songs’, a category which likewise includes such tracks as:

While this is far from an exhaustive account of all the tracks within Prince’s vast back catalogue that could be considered to be ‘Gear Shift Songs’, it does serve to demonstrate the extent to which he was evidently perennially preoccupied with this particular structural form.

Similarly, by consulting the above graphic, we are likewise able to broadly deduce what is meant by the term ‘Gear Shift Songs’ and the singular structural features any track that could be said to belong to this sub-category would inherently exhibit.

Put simply, all of the tracks noted in the above image can each be sub-divided into two or more musical movements that are each musically distinct from one another, yet still collectively constitute one singular composition.

For a more comprehensive discussion of Prince’s ‘Gear Shift Songs’ and the ways in which these kinds of compositions differ from his more conventionally structured material, please do check out the below article I wrote for @Housequake in August, 2021.

housequake.com/2021/08/14/the…

As such, having largely identified the structural characteristics of what would constitute a ‘Gear Shift Song’ within the context of Prince’s canon, we are now able to discern the ways in which ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ structurally adheres to this specific formal approach.

At three minutes and forty-two seconds in length, ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ can broadly be said to consist of two musically distinct movements, with the transition between these two sections occurring approximately two minutes and forty-three seconds into the track’s duration.

Musically, the majority of this first section of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ appears to predominantly rely on the following repeated chord progression:

F#m – D – A – B – Bm – F# – C#sus4 – C#

Undoubtedly the most interesting and noteworthy section of this eight-chord sequence is the point at which the progression moves from the chord of B Major to B Minor, as indicated and demonstrated below:

F#m – D – A – [ B – Bm ] – F# – C#sus4 – C#

While shifting between the major and minor variations of the exact same chord in this fashion in a progression is far from uncommon, within the realm of popular music it is still a reasonably rare occurrence, and as such is certainly worthy of our further attention in this case.

Musically, major chords possess a brighter audible quality that causes them to be more readily associated with emotions of a more positive nature, while minor chords function in the exact opposite manner and instead evoke emotions of a darker and more melancholic variety.

As such, shifting between major and minor chords within the context of a progression musically evokes a profound sense movement between these two opposing emotional states for the listener, with happiness giving way to sadness or vice versa.

In the case of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, this musical and emotional shift is further compounded by the fact that the track's chord progression employs the in-frequently used practice of shifting between the major and minor variations of the exact same chord.

Consequently, if we now return to the eight-chord sequence that largely underpins this first section of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, we are able to observe more keenly the emotional shift that musically occurs when the progression transitions from B Major to B Minor.

Musically, this portion of the chord progression emotionally moves the listener from a joyful high (B Major) to a melancholy low (B Minor) in such a swift manner that it audibly evokes feelings of emotional ambivalence.

These notions of ambivalence, evoked by the musical foundation upon which the first section of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ is predominantly built, are likewise reflected in the track’s principle lyrical and emotional preoccupations.

Much like ‘Sign O’ The Times’ or ‘Dear Mr. Man’, the lyrical thematic concerns of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ are principally socially conscious in nature, and finds Prince in a state of dissatisfaction with the socio-political condition of the contemporary world that surrounds him.

Nowhere is this overriding sense of ambivalence on Prince’s part towards certain aspects of the contemporary socio-political landscape more keenly felt than in the lyrical observation that opens the track’s second verse:

Due to the augmented nature of Prince’s vocals throughout much of the song, it is occasionally difficult to discern what is being said, a situation that is further complicated by the previously noted distinct lack of any accompanying liner notes or officially transcribed lyrics.

Unfortunately, this is very much the case here, and as such we do not definitively know what it is exactly that Prince finds to his right in the situation lyrically depicted in the below passage, with all transcriptions of this lyric featuring a fair degree of audible conjecture.

Most websites transcribing the lyrics for ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ appear to speculate that this word is “Mars”, which would certainly be in-keeping with the Afrofuturistic sci-fi aesthetic that permeates much of the surrounding album.

However, in their comprehensive discussion of ART OFFICIAL AGE, Funkatopia audibly interpret this word to be “malls” instead, and as such I have included both possibilities in my own transcription featured above.

facebook.com/watch/live/?re…

For those wishing to explore the explicit manner in which ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ invokes Prince’s preoccupation with Afrofuturism as noted above, then please do read “Art Official Cage: An Exploration of Prince and Afrofuturism” by @darlingnisi linked below.

darlingnisi.net/analysis/art-o…

In her piece, @darlingnisi situates the Afrofuturism of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ both within the context of Prince’s career, as well as within the broader aesthetic tradition of Afrofuturism, and is a fascinating exploration of Prince’s irrefutable status as an Afrofuturistic artist.

However, debates surrounding whether it is “Mars” or “malls” Prince encounters to his right in this aforementioned lyrical scenario ultimately only serves to distract us from the self-referential manner in which this lyric principally functions.

Self-referentially, the manner in which this lyric is constructed explicitly invokes a prior Prince composition released almost thirty years before ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, entitled ‘The Cross’, the second verse of which opens like so:

Featured on the fourth side of his seminal double album, Sign O’ The Times (1987), ‘The Cross’ lyrically follows in the same socially conscious vein of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, although with an admittedly more overt theological angle than is featured in the latter song.

While ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ substitutes the collective “us” of ‘The Cross’ for the individual pronoun of “me”, the similarities between these two lyrics are irrefutable and as such can only be taken as a deliberately self-referential invocation on the part of Prince.

Indeed, Prince was no stranger to making occasional call backs to his prior work in both a lyrical and musical capacity, but it was never in a haphazard manner and rarely ever was it without an overriding thematic purpose, and ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ is certainly no exception.

In this case, Prince’s self-referentiality is employed to evoke a sense of parity between the socio-political conditions depicted in ‘The Cross’ and ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, with little having changed in the intervening three decades to alleviate the social ills of the former song.

However, the picture Prince paints in ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ is not just one of social stagnation, but in fact of further decline, with the natural beauty of the “flowers” he once saw to his right in ‘The Cross’ now no longer being present in his contemporary social depiction.

In this respect, the notion put forward by Funkatopia that it is in fact “malls” that Prince sees to his right in ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ rather than “flowers” certainly seems more in line with this overriding sense of ambivalence towards particular aspects of contemporary culture.

Evoking notions of over-urbanisation, with the natural “flowers” giving way to the image of the man-made “mall”, this lyric consequently communicates on both a textual and meta-textual level Prince’s profound dissatisfaction with the socio-political state of the modern world.

When considered in this light, Prince’s introductory declaration to ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ can unfortunately be viewed from a somewhat ironic perspective when situated within the context of the socio-political stagnation seemingly depicted throughout the course of the song.

Furthermore, this evident sense of contemporary ambivalence on the part of Prince is only further amplified and reinforced by the previously demonstrated way in which the musical component of this portion of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ emotionally functions in the exact same manner.

Confronted with this oppressive and stagnant socio-political landscape, ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ likewise finds Prince lyrically outlining what can ultimately be done to attempt to alleviate these social ills.

Emancipation is the name of the game here, namely emancipation from the restrictive titular cage, with Prince making such an intent on his part explicitly clear in the opening two lines of the track’s first verse:

Lyrically, the track is replete with a litany of phrases and imagery that all collectively serve to reinforce the notion that liberation from the aforementioned titular cage is the means by which socio-political change can ultimately be enacted.

This explicit emancipatory mission statement can likewise be seen in the translated text of the spoken declaration that opens ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, the content of which is delivered exclusively in Danish by frequent latter-day Prince collaborator, Ida Nielsen.

Thematically, Ida’s concluding demand to “Open this cage” certainly aligns with the track’s broader thematic preoccupations with liberation, a notion likewise foregrounded by the recurring declaration to “Free the people” on the part of Prince throughout the track’s duration.

However, Prince is under no illusions about the simplicity of such an undertaking, as well as being keenly aware as to the oppressive societal structures that ultimately prevent and obstruct any attempts at liberation on the terms he lyrically depicts throughout the track.

Indeed, this pervasive sense of uncertainty pertaining to any such attempt at liberation is very much articulated in the closing musical portion of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, both on a textual and musical level.

Firstly, given the track’s previously demonstrated preoccupation with emancipation, the mere fact that the very last words verbally spoken within the context of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ are “Let me go!”, certainly deserves significant attention.

From a textual standpoint, the phrase is one that implies the speaker is being restrained in some capacity and is demanding that they be set free from this state of being, and as such is explicitly antithetical to any such notions pertaining to emancipation.

Coupled with the fact that it very much sounds like Prince is being waterboarded during this final section, the closing image of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ is rather pessimistic in nature and a far cry from the joyous notions of liberty that preoccupy the preceding portion of the song.

However, while ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ explicitly articulates such notions on a textual level, the closing section of the track likewise musically functions in an equally evocative manner.

As we noted previously in this thread, ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ broadly consists of two musical movements, the first of which draws to a close at around two minutes and forty-three seconds into the track’s three minute and forty-two second runtime.

While we have already explored the broad musical structure that underpins the first portion of the track, we have yet to engage with this distinct second musical movement which predominantly supports the track’s remaining runtime.

This second portion of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ principally relies upon the following, largely ascending six note bass line:

F# – G# – A – B – C# – F#

As the above clip demonstrates, with each successive note the bass line climbs higher and higher and gets further and further away from the introductory note of the sequence, before being inexorably pulled back down the scale to conclude on that very same lower opening note.

Consequently, from a musical perspective, this bass line very much reflects Prince’s own emotional and narrative arc throughout the course of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ as a whole, in regards to the position he finds himself in at the track’s conclusion.

Much like the notes in this bass line, Prince’s desire and attempts to achieve liberation are in the end undermined by those aforementioned oppressive societal structures, and he ultimately finds himself in the same constrained position he occupied at the opening of the track.

Furthermore, it is certainly worthy of note that ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ repeatedly lyrically associates the notion of emancipation with the concept of ascension, an association that is most prominent in the bridge portion of the track:

Indeed, this implicit association between liberation and the act of going “higher" only further serves to reinforce the notion that this bass line, is in fact musically reflective of the track’s broader narrative arc.

Musically, the initial five notes in this sequence attempt to ascend, getting further and further away from the first note of the sequence, but ultimately find their ascension undermined by the way in which in the bass line returns to that lower introductory note.

Through this lens, the parallels with Prince’s own undermined attempts at ascension or liberation are undeniably striking, and implicitly represent a profound union of the track’s musical and lyrical components and the inextricable way they thematically support one another.

As the album’s opening track, ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ very much anticipates many of the thematic concerns that seemingly preoccupy the remainder of ART OFFICIAL AGE, namely Prince’s ambivalence towards certain aspects of contemporary culture.

One need only look to the likes of ‘CLOUDS’, which shall be covered more comprehensively by @Henk_Liebeek tomorrow, to see the ways in which this overriding sense of ambivalence lyrically manifests itself elsewhere in the album’s track listing:

However, unlike ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, the preoccupations of which are largely appear to be socio-politically minded, the concerns of ‘CLOUDS’ predominantly appear to be technological in nature.

Indeed, ‘THE GOLD STANDARD’, which @EdgarKruize will be discussing on Friday, similarly adheres to this implicit sense of cultural ambivalence on the part of Prince, but instead approaches the topic specifically from a musical perspective.

Furthermore, as Edgar noted in his introductory thread yesterday, this particular lyric likewise features on the album’s aforementioned inner gatefold, and consequently gives further primacy to the notion that contemporary ambivalence serves as one of the album’s overall themes.

Nevertheless, within the context of ART OFFICIAL AGE, this thematic preoccupation undoubtedly originates with ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’, and is likewise manifested on both a lyrical and musical level throughout the track’s duration.

And with that, I shall draw this thread to a close. Thank you very much to everyone who has followed along with this lengthy deconstruction of ‘ART OFFICIAL CAGE’ and I hope I was able to add something of value to the discourse that surrounds this album!

What I hope this thread has principally demonstrated is what can be gained from taking a closer look at both the musical and lyrical components of Prince’s output and the ways in which such an exercise ultimately deepens our understanding of his artistry and the work.

Many thanks once again to @deejayumb and @EdgarKruize for inviting me to participate in this excellent series! Words cannot express how honoured I feel, and the inclusive online space you have created here through the #PrinceTwitterThread Series is invaluable to this community.

As I stated earlier, tomorrow @Henk_Liebeek will be taking a look at the album’s second track, ‘CLOUDS’, so please do check that out as it is sure to be an incredible read!

And likewise, please do check out all the other upcoming threads by @CaseyRain, @dmsrblog @RShumays, @RichardCole_Now, @Art0fficialAge, @DaysofWild and @TonyaPendleton, as well as those by the thread hosts, @EdgarKruize and @deejayumb!

Be sure to follow @PrinceThread to keep up to date with all the announcements regarding the #PrinceTwitterThread Series, and once again, many thanks for following along with this thread!