2007: #2 - "Last Night"

We have definitely gotten shit for liking this song as much as we do, but that won't stop us from putting at #2 for 2007.

Puffy, who hadn't produced anything really worth hearing since he was called Sean Combs well over a decade ago, reinvents himself as a stylishly retro, electronic-pop rapper/singer/brooder, nearly two years before Kanye or Kid Cudi made huge splashes doing so. And by combining eerie video game synths with a Prince sample that's not too obvious, he avoids the usual knock that he just raps (lamely) over old songs. He can't sing either, but Keyshia Cole can, and she nearly makes this song her own on her larger-than-life pre-choruses.

But the chorus, which Diddy ingeniously uses to kick off the song (a dumb trick, sure, but it's uncommon enough to stand out), also shines. He sings on it, in a multi-tracked vocal, and it could be argued, like with Kanye on 808s and Heartbreak, that the off-pitch singing mars the track, making the melodies non-existent. But we thought Puffy was able to use his poor singing to his advantage; he sounds wounded and real for the first time, and some of the awkwardness and pitchiness seems perfectly planned, as if a well-performed version of the song wouldn't be as melodically interesting.

We may be alone in this, but we love this song.