Album Review.
Overall: An interesting project that is more impressive than I thought it would be. It’s worth trying on.
“Last Train to Paris” from Diddy’s latest concoction, Dirty Money, is a surprisingly intriguing project that is fairly innovative and has a consistent concept. Clearly, someone in Dirty Money is lovelorn, as majority of the album illustrates the grim side of romance. I can appreciate a consistent theme, but if you’re going to talk about the EXACT same issue in every song, then you need to get creative and come up with a different perspective or way to present it each time. Despite the redundancy issue (which extends itself to the overuse of the expletive m**** f*****) and the occasional problem with being concise, a good portion of the album is written moderately well. The production is just superb to me. The sound is diverse and experimental, as it cleverly marries hip-hop (the popular music of the last decade) with electronic-techno dance (the new mainstream sound). “Paris” has only a slight hint of R&B, which I think is a major disadvantage to the singers in the group, Dawn Richard (formerly of Diddy’s pop/R&B group Danity Kane) and Kalenna Harper; they may have been able to vocally display more with a stronger R&B/soul influence. It’s difficult to shine vocally with up-tempo music, and there isn’t much singing in hip-hop, so the ladies didn’t have much of an opportunity to demonstrate their vocal abilities.
Speaking of Richard and Harper, I think that Dirty Money is misrepresented. I was under the impression that they were a hip-hop/R&B group, and that I would equally hear all three members on the album. Not the case. Richard and Harper visually and audibly have the aura of background singers instead of intricate parts of the group. Guest artists, like Chris Brown and Trey Songz dominated their respective feature songs more than the Dirty Money girls did the whole album! Now that I’m on guest features, there were too many of them. There were times where I was thinking “Who’s album am I listening to?” All and all, I enjoyed this record more than I expected to and if Dirty Money improves the weaker aspects of this album they’ll be good to go.
Overall: An interesting project that is more impressive than I thought it would be. It’s worth trying on.
“Last Train to Paris” from Diddy’s latest concoction, Dirty Money, is a surprisingly intriguing project that is fairly innovative and has a consistent concept. Clearly, someone in Dirty Money is lovelorn, as majority of the album illustrates the grim side of romance. I can appreciate a consistent theme, but if you’re going to talk about the EXACT same issue in every song, then you need to get creative and come up with a different perspective or way to present it each time. Despite the redundancy issue (which extends itself to the overuse of the expletive m**** f*****) and the occasional problem with being concise, a good portion of the album is written moderately well. The production is just superb to me. The sound is diverse and experimental, as it cleverly marries hip-hop (the popular music of the last decade) with electronic-techno dance (the new mainstream sound). “Paris” has only a slight hint of R&B, which I think is a major disadvantage to the singers in the group, Dawn Richard (formerly of Diddy’s pop/R&B group Danity Kane) and Kalenna Harper; they may have been able to vocally display more with a stronger R&B/soul influence. It’s difficult to shine vocally with up-tempo music, and there isn’t much singing in hip-hop, so the ladies didn’t have much of an opportunity to demonstrate their vocal abilities.
Speaking of Richard and Harper, I think that Dirty Money is misrepresented. I was under the impression that they were a hip-hop/R&B group, and that I would equally hear all three members on the album. Not the case. Richard and Harper visually and audibly have the aura of background singers instead of intricate parts of the group. Guest artists, like Chris Brown and Trey Songz dominated their respective feature songs more than the Dirty Money girls did the whole album! Now that I’m on guest features, there were too many of them. There were times where I was thinking “Who’s album am I listening to?” All and all, I enjoyed this record more than I expected to and if Dirty Money improves the weaker aspects of this album they’ll be good to go.
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