[12] Billboard magazine's Kenneth Partridge said Prince is "funnier, sexier, and more self-aware than he's been in ages" and that the album is his most creative since the 1990s.

[18] In a less enthusiastic review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that Art Official Age is a "full-fledged R&B album" in the vein of Prince's work with the New Power Generation, but some of his "modernization feels a bit ham-fisted".

[7] Q magazine was more critical and dismissed it as "an overlong, pan-generic concept album",[14] while Jon Pareles of The New York Times said its songs lack memorable melodies despite the "musicianly ingenuity" of their production.

Pareles added that it abandons the concept established by the album's first few songs and interludes, which have Prince "waking up from suspended animation 45 years from now".

[19] Robert Christgau cited "Breakfast Can Wait" and "FunknRoll" as highlights in his review for Cuepoint, facetiously remarking, "our greatest composer-performer of romantic nu-funk erotica wakes up 40 years later wishing he was Janelle Monáe".