Album Review: Diddy - Dirty Money - Last Train To Paris

Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy.. Why not change it again, to Diddy - Dirty Money? This is rap's most known artist-name changing fashion icon-like millionaire. Makes sense? Well, anyway, I've never been a big fan of Diddy. But I must admit, the man knows how to create success. He has so many connections, an album featuring his befriended artists can not fail. And this one doesn't either. Diddy - Dirty Money is a group consisting of (of course) Diddy, ex-Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard and singer Kalenna. When you look at their group-pictures, the girls look almost indistinguishable, which really creates an "I'm Diddy and these are my toy-girls"-vibe.

Now, on to the album, titled Last Train To Paris. I can say it quite simple: I love it. The songs are very danceable, with nice concepts and great guest-appearances. The girls have great, warm voices. Diddy's raps can be annoying, but they fit in just fine. This, after all, is not as much quality music as it is fun-music. Music around a theme: love. The ups and downs. This album takes you on the roller coaster ride that goes along with most relationships. So, that's my general review. But of course there are better and worse songs. First, I'll list my favorite songs (in no particular order):

• Ass On The Floor (featuring Swizz Beatz). Don't you just love to hear a woman sing "Shit, you know deep down I'll always love ya, trying to find my way back to your heart, you motherfucker". The song is about going to the club and getting real drunk to forget about the man that keeps hurting you, only to run right back to him when you're drunk enough... Sounds familiar (to me).
• Yeah Yeah You Would (featuring Grace Jones), produced by Danja, who usually brings the heat. The song is very addictive, especially the hook. Enough said, you wanna know more, YouTube it.
• Looking For Love (featuring Usher): OH-MY-GAWD! This is the best beat I've heard in ages (by J. Lack and Polow da Don) and the chorus fits it so well. Diddy kicks it off with a real wack rap, in which he mentions the word 'motherfucker' too often, but when Usher takes over.. No words. This song should be played only with the highest volume, and everyone should scream along with the bridge: "Hello, welcome to my table, bring your girlfriends, everything payed for, we gon' get it in, ain't that what you came for, heard you was looking for me.." It's a great song, buy the album!
• Strobe Lights (featuring Lil' Wayne). And I don't even like Lil' Wayne. But his rhymes on this song please me and the Dirty Money-part of the group takes you to another world on the chorus. Great song.
• I Know (featuring Chris Brown, Wiz Khalifa & Seven). Beautiful, emotional, with an easy but straightforward rap by Wiz. And I'm not gonna promote it any further because Rihanna-beater Chris Brown is on it.

Other songs worth mentioning that I really like, are Loving You No More (featuring Drake), Hello Good Morning (featuring T.I.), Yesterday (featuring Chris Brown) and Coming Home (featuring Skylar Grey).

Songs I don't like, are:

• Your Love (featuring Trey Songz) because it bores me and because I hate it when women sing about getting their pussies licked.
• Shades (featuring a whole lotta dudes) because I don't like Justin Timberlake and Lil' Wayne, and they ruin this song for me. Plus, I think making love in marmalade is too sticky and nasty to seriously consider, and the song doesn't make much sense because "I'll even try different things" does not sound like an enormous sacrifice you would make in order to win someone back. Sigh. Even Diddy can get TOO lame.
• Change because it's too repetitive and Diddy can't sing.
• Angels (featuring Notorious B.I.G. and Rick Ross). I think the beat is annoying (I didn't like the original by Jay-Z (Where I'm From) either and I think Diddy should stop trying to drag Biggie into every project he does. Big is dead. Get over it.

So yeah, in summary: the album has so many songs that the majority is still great, but there are some bad songs and some AWESOME songs. I advise you to listen to this album!

Artist Recommendation: Danity Kane

Danity Kane, the R&B girl group Diddy selected on his Making The Band show, has split up. But their music lives on, and it's still worth checking out. I started listening to DK when their album Welcome To The Dollhouse was released, and when I found out that album is SUPER HOT, I also gave their first album Danity Kane a chance. And now that they're not releasing anything new because the group has broken up, I'm doing my best to find every non-album track they ever recorded. All in all, I now have pretty much every Danity Kane song and I can make a very good recommendation.

So, what tracks should you listen to first? I mean, you'll love every one of their songs eventually (just like me), but you have to start somewhere, right?

Ok, first the best songs on the Danity Kane album: Touching My Body, Heartbreaker, One Shot and Sleep On It. This album produced the hit Show Stopper, but I personally don't like that song more than average.

On the Welcome To The Dollhouse album, the best songs are: Pretty Boy, Damaged, Bad Girl (featuring Missy Elliott), Strip Tease, 2 Of You and Poetry. Well, this album is pretty much hot from beginning to end so you should listen to the whole album.

A nice non-album tracks is It's Yours (non-released track from Welcome To The Dollhouse). It's very catchy.

Last but not least, some of the girls from Danity Kane are trying to start off a solo career. You should definitely keep an eye on them. Listen to Aubrey O'Day's song Party All The Time, which features Young Money's female singer Shanell. You'll like it. :)