Last Train to Paris

A new band from our old friend

Sean Combs is known as one who likes to record hip-hop CDs, perform music, sing songs and dance dances. Yet one more hobby of his is constant changing of stage names or aliases, most famous being Puff Daddy. Currently, Sean lives and enjoys his life under the pseudonym Diddy. Whatever the name we give him, or the name he gives himself, the man can not leave music for one second because he is torn apart by his ambitions, ideas and plans. Diddy’s last initiative is Diddy Dirty Money, a band with roots out of hip-hop (any surprise?) and three performers. Diddy is the leader, and Dawn Richard and Kalenna Harper are the two other members. The first and so far the only studio product of this formation is called Last Train To Paris, a CD released in the late 2010. According to Diddy, the record, which took three years to make, is based on a complicated love story. The main characters of this story take their time to find and lose each other many times before they finally are bound by unbreakable chains of love. Well, a literal form like that is not very traditional of the hip-hop school, which made many people put the record aside before it was actually released. They should not have.

Last Train To Paris is targeted at the wide audience

As a matter of fact, Last train to Paris is a hip-hop product only formally, providing what past the author of this project has got. When it comes to the point, you can hear that Diddy is doing here what he has been keen on for a few last years, which is the synthesis of dance and pop music with rap. This time, the artist got down to this problem very seriously as he involved a great number of producers whim we do not need to enumerate here. Therefore, the sounding of the record leaves no complaints while the combination of all the mentioned trends goes seamlessly. Skilful sequencing of the tracks on Last train to Paris provides smooth unfolding of the story. The listener is always aware of what is going on and regularly comes across true hits, also wisely scattered across the record. The hits here are not likely to please the hip-hop audience alone. Rather they are going to please a much wider public, those who do not die for particular genres, but listen to whatever they find entertaining. You can find true explosive numbers here, like Yeah Yeah You Would, and Coming Home, reflecting Diddy’s current attraction to club and dance music. But we can also discover those tracks where we hear the real Sean Combs, some more personal stuff. Such include the lyrically and vocally flawless Yesterday. The actual singing here is Chris Brown’s duty while Diddy does the rapping. Another great song from the same lyrical group is Looking For Love featuring Usher.

All ideas of the album work perfectly

Diddy may be telling the public that Diddy Dirty Money is a real band with three members each having his own role. However, Last Train To Paris proves it that the band’s real and only leader is Diddy himself. Dawn and Kalenna did everything well and professionally, which is demonstrated on such tracks as the energetic Ass On The Floor, and the smooth I Hate That You Love Me. Yet their work, their appearance on this album looks fragmental, while Diddy stays with the listener all the time. It also worth mentioning that, apart from the above mentioned singers, this record features some other great performers, including Grace Jones, Lil Wayne and Drake. Well, this is not surprising, because in the hip-hop community artists prefer to invite as many colleagues as possible whenever they are making their solo albums as if this is not working session, but a glamorous party. What is surprising is that unlike many suchlike albums, Last Train To Paris does not have any singer sing badly, or just fill the silence. All the guests did exactly what was needed and contributed to the success of the record. Summarizing the said, we admit that Last Train To Paris easily reveals a great many highlights among which it is extremely difficult to find a drawback.