Sometimes two artistes get together that you could never have imagined collaborating, and it just seems like such a bad idea! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In this section, I'm going to tackle a team-up and talk about whether or not I feel it worked, why the collaboration happened and how it affected one or both of the two artiste's future careers and record sales.
Jimmy Page and Puff Daddy --- Come with me
This one
had to be first! When I heard about it I was gobsmacked. Jimmy Page, lead guitarist with legendary seventies classic rock gods Led Zeppelin, teaming up with Puff Daddy/P. Diddy, a rapper known for songs with titles like “Real niggas”, “Gangster ****” and “Bad boy for life”, and who was both a record producer and a fashion designer. It just seemed unlikely.
On the one hand you were going to have Puff Daddy's legion of rap fans moaning that he was allying himself with a “honky” (maybe; I don't claim this was said but I'm sure it was considered and discussed, if not in public) old guy from a has-been band who were living on past glories, and on Page's side, the Zep fans could not have been happy to have had one of their classic songs mashed up and resampled for this rapper.
The song in question was “Kashmir”, from Zep's “Physical grafitti” album, and featured Puff Daddy singing (or rapping, I guess) the lyric across Jimmy's guitar rendition of the song. It also featured in the film “Godzilla”, earning it more interest and sales.
So why does it work? Hard to say. Maybe because Puff Daddy “sung” along the melody of “Kashmir”, understanding the original song, or maybe it was Page's excellent as ever guitar work. It's certainly a dramatic song, moreso even than the original. Maybe it needed an update. Maybe it was the charisma of the two collaborators. Perhaps it was the addition of the orchestra, that added that extra element to the song that it was missing.
The truth is, no-one ever knows why these team-ups work (or don't): it's probably due to a range of factors, but for an unlikely combination of talents and backgrounds, this song really worked, and in fact it's one of the few rap-flavoured records I listen to.
As for how it affected their careers? Well, I don't know about you, but I have yet to bump into either Jimmy Page or Puff Daddy down my local job centre!