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Tuesday, April 05, 2011 By Christina Butan '13
Advertising
P. Diddy and his fellow group members of the trio Diddy-Dirty Money, Dawn Richard and Kalenna Harper, are going on tour to celebrate their latest album, released in December 2010, Last Train To Paris. The “Coming Home Tour” is to start off on April 13th in Minneapolis, Minnesota and work its way through May 15th, ending in St. Louis, Missouri. Diddy-Dirty Money will be hitting a handful of states to enrich our musical lives with their latest hits, which without a doubt, will blow you away.
Last Train To Paris is definitely a pleasant surprise - entirely different from anything Diddy has released in the past; this conceptual album creates an emotional, artistic statement filled to the brim with Eurodance influence. The album starts off with a quick introduction simply titled “Intro,” which gives you a great, accurate taste to what the rest of the album will sound like. “Intro” is lyrically haunting and infused with an electronic rhythm that doesn’t fail to tease and make you want more. The rest of the album floats seamlessly with these components, including a variety of sounds and voices on each track. “Someone to Love Me” is a triple threat, featuring reggae, jazz and rap all in one. “Last Night Part 2” is a combination of hip-hop and R&B and has one of the catchiest choruses on the album. If you tried to classify Last Train To Paris into one genre, you’d fail - Diddy brings just about everything he can to the table.
This album excels with its genre combinations, but that’s mostly due to the incorporation of well chosen feature artists in the majority of the songs on the album. Ranging from big names like Chris Brown, Justin Timberlake and Usher to smaller ones like Skylar Grey and Swizz Beatz, each of these artists does the heavy lifting on the tracks, while Diddy seems inclined to rap a few times on them. “Yesterday,” one of the two songs Chris Brown takes a part in, is melodically simple, but infused with a lot of emotion. The Diddy-Brown collaboration is nice but unneeded; Brown could have easily carried this track on his own. The same goes for “Your Love,” which features Trey Songz. The track is incredibly catchy and will get your head bopping before you know it, but it’s really more of a Trey-Dawn-Kaleena collaboration than it is a Diddy-Trey one.
“Coming Home,” which features Skylar Grey, is the track the Diddy-Dirty Money tour is named after and the album’s most popular single. This song is almost a twist compared to everything else on the album - Diddy is the star. He proves himself a pop oriented hip hop artist on this track and gives us autobiographical snapshots of his personal life. “Coming Home” ties the bow for Last Train to Paris rather than fit in with the conceptual love story created throughout the album.
Overall, Last Train To Paris creates a rich soundscape to back up an emotional chapter in P. Diddy’s personal life. Creative, exciting and expressive - this trio definitely deserves a round of applause. And they will certainly receive it, beginning April 13th.
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