Nice recommend, Colin! I actually gave this one a listen on Rhapsody a few weeks back after allmusic gave it a stellar review:
With Triple P three and a half years in the past, Waajeed and Saadiq condense their name from Platinum Pied Pipers to PPP and transform just about everything else, from their associates to their sound. Abundance is no downtempo left-field R&B affair. It's not the type of album you can either absorb or allow to fade into the background. There's no choice here; the songs confront the ears, yet there's no discord, only an immediate connection to the pleasure receptors. Joined by a completely different roster of vocal and songwriting collaborators — primarily Coultrain and Karma Stewart, but also involving Jamila Raegan and Neco Redd, as well as several instrumentalists (drums, guitar, strings, horns) and one assist from abstract hip-hop producer Dabrye — the crew orchestrates a walloping set that, while firmly rooted in R&B throughout, takes a bracing turn with each track. It's a product of the studio, but it must have been constructed with full-band live performance in mind, where there are no lulls in energy, from the tracks with bounding dance beats and call-and-response vocals to the ballads with exquisitely detailed arrangements. Even with the knowledge that Waajeed's ghost productions have been circulating throughout the upper end of the industry, it's startling to hear songs as large, direct, and sleek as "Luv Affair" and "Go, Go, Go," a back-to-back pair that would not be out of place within the last half of Diddy's Press Play or any other album involving productions from Timbaland and Danja. "Go, Go, Go," in fact, could be fronted by Britney Spears, but it would lose the emotional grit. And it's that grit, combined with ambition-fueled passion and a palpable sense of "in a zone" energy, that ties all of these songs — the alternate-reality pop hits laced with gleaming synths, the song-oriented house tracks, the tasteful "grown folks"-styled moments, and everything in-between. The album's lead single, released months before the album, was the dynamite '60s throwback "On a Cloud," indicating that PPP could have done a full-length genre exercize to rival Amy Winehouse's Back to Black or Raphael Saadiq's The Way I See It. Instead, it's just one piece of a multi-dimensional album with no misfires. Andy Kellman | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
CHECKING
THIS OUT 2010: Healing the Wounds of the Past.... http://prince.org/msg/8/325740 | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
^^ Totally had all of you in mind. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
errant said: Cinnie said: yeah that interview is from 2005 when Platinum Pied Pipers dropped their debut "Triple P". I was curious if THAT was the album errant had, or if errant somehow already grabbed Abundance by PPP.
I checked. It was Abundance. I've had it for about a month I guess, but never got around to listening because I binge-downloaded a bunch of stuff around then and it got lost in the shuffle. Going to try to give it a listen sometime this week at work. Awesome! | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
just to confirm-whats the album called? | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
jonylawson said: just to confirm-whats the album called?
Abundance | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Cinnie said: jonylawson said: just to confirm-whats the album called?
Abundance well-im off to buy that shhh! | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
OK - I have got to check this one out! | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Cinnie said: errant said: I checked. It was Abundance. I've had it for about a month I guess, but never got around to listening because I binge-downloaded a bunch of stuff around then and it got lost in the shuffle. Going to try to give it a listen sometime this week at work. Awesome! going to try again this weekend. version i had was all messed up, but what i could make out was good. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
I'm so glad I let everyone know about this. The end of the album has some more electronic styles. I think the sequence of the album is key. I end up nesting in certain areas of the album. Certain SIDES of the album because it is double vinyl and has 4 sides. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |