mixtape maestro

For most of 2010, Last Train To Paris felt like a…well, train wreck waiting to happen. With some questionable leakages, flop singles and numerous push-backs of the album’s release, it felt like the album would never come out, let alone be one anyone wanted to actually listen to (was anybody really looking forward to an Auto-Tuned Diddy’s own version of 808′s & Heartbreak?). And don’t even get us started on the name change from Dirty Money to the clunky Diddy-Dirty Money.

Upon its release in December, though, Paris quickly proved Diddy knew what he was going, the album’s A-list guest stars, adventurous, electro-based musicality and alien-toned vocal aid of back-up female duo Dirty Money all coming together to make one excitingly forward-thinking urban-pop opus (the perfectly low-key sister collection to Kanye’s equally stunning fourth-quarter master-work My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy).

This past winter saw the album score a major pop grab with the Hollywood-huge spectacle “Coming Home” (how could he go wrong with that record’s glossy singer-songwriter pop hook, surprisingly moving autobiographical sentiment and that epic made-for-T.I. Southern hip-pop stomp?), but our ears were most tuned to its co-single release “Ass On The Floor”, the Swizz Beatz-helmed Y3K banger that, upon its initial leaking as a “Monster Mondays” freebie a few months back, sounded like it was going to dominate club floors world-wide.

Alas, it hasn’t, but the track remains the fiercest cut from the Paris album, forming a delectably icy futuro-R&B frame out of moody synths and an insanely thunderous drum track topped with Dirty Money’s cutting “motherfucker”‘s and Swizz’ catchy demands for one to get their freak on on the dance floor as an anti-hater stance.

The track may not have lit up the charts as much as we would’ve liked, though it has recently spawned two remixes to ensure further Web-fan support: one featuring a cameo from Trina (from the Miami rappress‘ new mixtape Diamonds Are Forever, due tomorrow), and the other, a sultry revamp by production team The-Dream and Tricky Stewart that turns “Floor” into a long-lost Aaliyah/ R. Kelly jeep jam.

Grab them below, then peep the video to the original.

DL: “Ass On The Floor (Remix)” featuring Trina (alt)

DL: “Ass On The Floor (The-Dream/ Tricky Stewart Remix)” (alt)