Diddy-Dirty Money: Last Train to Paris – review

This is a concept album (the "plot": Diddy meets and loses the girl of his dreams, and may or may not reach Paris in time to woo her back), but that needn't trouble us. There's quite enough to take in on his first album since 2006 without the complication of a storyline. There are new sounds, from Italian house to techno, a long list of stellar guests, and a new female duo, Dirty Money, who operate as the project's backbone, and deserve their equal billing. The album is a mess, but a hook-heavy, likable one. There's Grace Jones intoning over grubby psychedelic squelching on Yeah Yeah You Would; there's Lil Wayne delivering verses so oddly cadenced they are almost free jazz on the gripping Shades, and Dirty Money do their scorching vocal duty everywhere else. Somehow, it all works – and Diddy himself has some fantastic lines ("Tears of a Clown, I hate that song/ Always feel like they're talking to me when it comes on").