'Urban Renewal', er why?

Possibly the only rock star I can think of whose appeal I am totally unable to fathom. At least Mick Hucknall can sing and Elton John looks like a gay alien. As all good pop stars should.

But Collins?? Dull bloke, dull songs, dull acting career, dull suit, dull divorces. Easy target, but still one of the most offensively bland presences ever in popular culture, for sure.

So, ahem, in summary...er, no I can't explain why this record been made. ;-)

Collins = dull bloke (non star) and dull other things...yes but he's written a lot of very pleasant, melodic songs. You have to accept that a lot of people like pleasant things.

As to the original question: why has this 'rap tribute' album come out? Based only on bits of anecdotal evidence (eg an aspiring gospel singer I knew who was obsessed with his stuff), I think Phil Collins commands surprisingly high respect in the r&b/hip hop community. This may be partly to do with a period in his career when some of his music crossed over into that area (eg "Sussudio") and he produced people like Philip Bailey; but also an old-fashioned respect for songcraft that's considered semi-laughable in the indie/alternative area.

Also if you consider the new version of "Another Day In Paradise", it lends itself well to that kind of re-interpretation. The original melody and harmonies were very strong but the rhythm was awfully plodding - so it's ripe for having stronger beats grafted onto it.

Or to be precise "Easy Lover" was a collaboration 'twixt Bailey and Collins. Of course Chris Morris had something to say about that :).

I agree about "Another Day In Paradise" being potentially *much* better with a stronger rhythm. That's why I always preferred Jamtronik's proto-Ace-of-Base version ...

Who is Chris Morris and what did he have to say ? (BTW, Collins *did* produce the Philip Bailey album with "Easy Lover").

I just find it amusing that Peter Gabriel experimented with African music and even had a "funky" spell, but it's Phil Collins that's getting a rap tribute album. Kinda puts paid to the whole "world music" thing, dontcha think?

My guess as to why Phil Collins got a rap tribute album: it's gotta be the R&B revival. That's the only connection that I can think of.

I think David's right: "I think Phil Collins commands surprisingly high respect in the r&b/hip hop community. This may be partly to do with a period in his career when some of his music crossed over into that area (eg 'Sussudio')..." Once a friend of mine described "Sussudio" as "a damn good Prince record," and I've loved it ever since. In general, I do think Collins gets short-shrift -- "Two Hearts" is as good an '80s Motown tribute as, I don't know, "Church of the Poison Mind" or "When Smokey Sings."

BUT, let's not lose perspective here... I don't know exactly what's going to be on the album, but I gather it's stuff like Brian McKnight, Seal, and Patti Labelle (only McKnight I know for sure). MOR, mor(e) or less. Anyway, Collins doesn't NEED a hip-hop tribute: Eminem already did the best one imaginable.

Guilty confession: I kinda like "I Don't Care Anymore." I think it's a great "eat shit and die, motherfucker!" song.

if there is only one thing in this man's entire music career that I can give him props for, it is that he was the session drummer for Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy by Brian Eno. That is still a darn good prog rock record.

Does a materialistic and aspirational lifestyle inevitably lead to having Patrick Bateman-style music taste?

Phil Collins - hard to defend. Impossible to defend, almost. And yet, and yet, I almost miss him. It's like we were saying in Patrick (not Bateman!) 's Adult Contemporary thread - you knew where you stood with people like Collins. Travis and Coldplay are just as bad but get massive play from the broadsheets and Q....oh hold on, so did PC in his day.

Brand X are an extremely important step in the evolution of hiphop, overlooked of course by the so-called critics

I'm down with Phil. Not that I ever voluntarily listen to his music, but if you gotta be soft-rock, you might as well do it his way - he doesn't oversing, he seems like a fairly humble fellow, no one acts like his records are the second coming, he recorded "Sussudio" and "Don't Lose My Number" - you can do A LOT worse, and I'm not going to go into this in detail, since I think Dan is still recovering from my recent mention of Michael Bolton ;).

he is the epitome of 80's thatcherite foulness, in possesion of the most noxious voice in pop, truly foul to look upon & his drumming on early eno albums is shite.

C'mon, "No One Receiving" is pretty good!

Tom: I think the difference is that AOR magazines and radio stations etc. make themselves out to be terribly *cool* and *credible* for supporting Travis and Coldplay in a way they never did with Collins. There's a pretence of "relevance" that wasn't there in the 80s: compared to the current indie-gone-AOR wave, Collins seems quite appealingly unpretentious. I think that's why a lot of people who hated him when he was omnipresent have now come to have no opinion either way: people like myself probably hated him excessively as a result of his unavoidability as they now do with Texas.

Patrick: Chris Morris was responsible for "Uzi Lover" by "Fur Q", a broad parody of early 90s gangsta rap (as Tom once said, it doesn't actually *sound like* its source in the way his "Panty Smile" parody of Nirvana does) which was based around ... well, it's obvious :).