Now he’s released Raymond v Raymond and, after all the listening and reflection, the only thing I was sure of when I started listening to it was that I wasn’t sure of how I felt about the album. I heard the Love In This Club track and, while it was catchy, it did not do much for me so I never took the time to listen to the whole album. The Here I Stand album in 2008 just passed me by. His music is never going to change the world or evoke the kind of emotion that icons like Michael Jackson have, but it has its place and I have been a fan from Usher (1994)and My Way (1997) through to 8701 (2001) and Confessions (2004). This is an artist who was able to carve a space in the world of R&B and stay relevant for over a decade. I still remember being fascinated by how a teenager could sing wonderful songs with feeling and emotion, yet still retain his youthfulness. I’ve gone back and listened to the Usher of old, submerging myself in what I consider classic Usher, songs like Nice & Slow, You Make Me Wanna, U Remind Me, Confessions Pt II and U Got It Bad. I have listened to the new Usher album Raymond v Raymond, countless times, letting it run till the end and then starting it all over again. Raymond v Raymond can largely be divided into two halves, self-pitying ballads that draw heavily on the R&B sound of the past decade and upbeat club numbers that, by and large, offer something different and even exciting.I’ve been working on this post for about two weeks now. It features a distraught Usher who, after accepting the end of his marriage and turning into "the man that I never thought I'd be", croons: "I'm ready to sign them papers, papers, papers." It points to a level of self-absorption that renders parody useless. Special mention deserves to be given to Papers, a song that boasts one of the strangest and most telling choruses in recent musical history. Perhaps contributing to this is the album's duration, at just shy of 59 minutes, it is too long to avoid sounding repetitive. all show up, but their cameos feel tacked on, rather than part of the fabric. Ludacris, the Black Eyed Peas' Will.I.Am and T.I. The album's other guest spots are less than astonishing, however. With whirling strings, Missy Elliott-style beats and throbbing bass it offers Raymond v Raymond's highest point.īut despite its big chorus and powerful vocal performance from Usher, the female rapper Nicki Minaj steals the show with a verse reminiscent of vintage Lil' Kim. The album's salvation arrives in the form of the club hit Lil Freak. Usher's devotional murmurings sound hollow and contrived and the tempo is so slow that the song practically hibernates its way out of the speakers. Likewise Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home) manages to avoid the downright slushiness of his similarly paced love songs.īut then the cloying ballad There Goes My Baby arrives and the singer uses up almost all of the goodwill gained from the album's opening tracks. The opener Monstar borrows from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to create something soulful and remarkably catchy. It's no surprise, then, that the 31-year-old performer has returned to plumbing the depths of failed relationships in the hope of recapturing some of that success.īut despite the somewhat cynical approach, the bizarre focus on legal documentation (more on that later) and a tendency to mix self-pity with vulgarity in an attempt to appear boyish and alluring, Raymond v Raymond is actually rather listenable. ![]() By contrast, the last time we heard from Usher (2008's Here I Stand) he was in uncharacteristically high spirits, but the album shifted a meager 1.5 million copies. ![]() The LP didn't just cement the singer's reputation as R&B's number-one heartbreak kid - it sold 20 million albums worldwide. ![]() If you're getting a feeling of deja vu, that's because back in 2004 he released Confessions - also a break-up album, that time from TLC's Chilli. It sees the R&B lothario (real name Usher Raymond IV) pondering his split from wife Tameka Foster and few stones are left unturned: it's a tale of love, loss and legal issues. With a title inspired by the 1970s divorce movie Kramer vs Kramer, Usher's sixth album is perhaps unsurprisingly a break-up record.
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