Platinum Pied Pipers

now playing: Platinum Pied Pipers - Luv Affair

Platinum Pied Pipers aka PPP aka Triple P is a Detroit-based hip-hop and r&b group. The members are producer Waajeed ( a founding member of Slum Village) and multi-instrumentalist Saadiq (not to be confused with Raphael Saadiq). The two met in 1992 and some years after that they decided to start working together as a duo. In 2000 they started to release 12"s and mixtapes and in 2003 their collaboration with Dwele called Ridin' High caught the attention of listeners and set the stage for a full-lenght album.

Their debut album Triple P was released in 2005 on Ubiguity Records and it was praised by some rather influential people such as Gilles Peterson and Questlove (“I listened to the album (Triple P) seven times in a row…I made 23 friends listen to the album 3 days straight… at gunpoint - I’m on the run. I will go to jail for Platinum Pied Pipers!!!!”) The album was also made the Pick of the Week by LA Weekly.

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Fellow Detroit artists Jay Dee, MC Ta-Raach, plus UK-based Spacek, and Los Angeles based SA-RA Creative Partners pop up on the album. As a whole Triple P is an interesting mix of different genres and catchier than you might at first think. A personal favorite of mine is the ninth track, Now or Never, which is pure genious in its simplicity.

After the debut, the group changed their name to the more simply stated PPP. Their second album, Abundance, was released in 2008. This album has a new, more progressive vibe to it, but it manages to stay true to Triple P's soul-based foundation. The result is a fluid mash-up of the group's array of both vintage and modern influences from pop, house, funk, Detroit techno, and of course, hip-hop.

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Hopefully the group will keep on making great music and bringing new ideas and approaches to soul and r&b. For now, all I can say is, enjoy these two.