Featuring The Songs Of Phil Collin

Like cities situated on major fault lines in the Earth’s crust, tribute albums are always on dodgy ground. First of all, who are they aimed at? The fans of the original artist, fans of the bands that do the covers, or some whole new breed of fans that have never heard of either? Are they really done for the sake of tribute, or is there a darker motive?

What has basically happened here is that a selection of Urban r’n’b singers have tackled an equally varied selection of Phil Collins songs.

We have Ol’ Dirty Bastard singing ‘Sussudio’, Lil’ Kim singing’ In The Air Tonight’, and Dane Bowers (gawp) singing ‘This Must Be Love’ with a bit of help from Kelis (double gawp). We also see others like Debelah Morgan, Montell Jordan and TQ knocking about.

As is to be expected, some of the aforementioned folk totally alter and re-write some of the songs, as is the case with ‘Sussido’ à la Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depend whether your allegiances lie with Mr Collins or Mr Bastard.

Among the songs featured on this one are the obvious candidates, the ones that have been sampled hundreds of times already anyway, i.e. ‘In The Air Tonight’ (which the inlay card is sad enough to point out was mentioned in Emenem’s ‘Stan’). Phil tells us that there are also ‘dark horses’ such as ‘Can’t Turn Back The Years’. Kellis pops up again on ‘I Don’t Care Anymore’. Neither do I.

For fans of urban r’n’b only. Phil Collins fans stay away.