USHER

USHER

Featured Album

Essential Albums

  • Confessions (Expanded Edition)
    Confessions (Expanded Edition)
    Confessions (Expanded Edition)

    100 Best Albums One of the more effective ways of mining your memory for years past is by associating specific times with the artists and albums that best soundtracked them. And if you have a distinct memory of 2004, then you remember how inescapable USHER’s fourth studio album Confessions was for the entirety of that year. This was Usher Raymond in his final form: No longer a boyish heart-throb under the tutelage of top producers that doubled as mentors, he’d finally reached his artistic prime. 8701, his previous album, offered the first accounts of adult feelings around romance and the maintenance of relationships. In those depictions, even when he did take accountability, he was typically in the position of the wounded counterpart. But the scandals he admitted to in Confessions were soap-opera-worthy, with a solid block of songs chronicling the progression of one story. The album’s title track tells an enthralling tale in which USHER comes to terms with the fact that he has to admit to his infidelity—a side chick across the country. The song’s sequel, “Confessions, Pt. II” (a ubiquitous single) ramps up the drama when he finds out the woman he’s been cheating with is three months pregnant. The story’s closing, “Burn”, finds him mourning the relationship he obliterated. And as affecting of a trilogy as that was, there are massive hits at every corner of Confessions. “Yeah!” with Lil Jon and Ludacris encapsulates the playful, hard-hitting feeling of Atlanta’s scene at the time. “My Boo” with Alicia Keys is one of defining duets of the 2000s and “Superstar” is a masterfully executed tribute to a lover. Looking back at its impact and depth, Confessions has achieved a status that few albums in the 21st century can live up to, but its influence is evident in how many have tried.

  • 8701
    8701
    8701

    After spending the ’90s as one of the country’s top teenage R&B sweethearts, full of uncompromising hormones and temptation, USHER re-emerged in 2001 with his third studio album, 8701—his first artistic offering as a non-teenager. And with that new milestone came music that detailed the experiences of a young man who was starting to see the ups and downs of the prospective love that he’d passionately sought out up to this point. The album’s lead single “U Remind Me”, with its fluttering chords, finds USHER mesmerised by a potential lover, but her similarities to an ex that broke his heart sours his attraction. Over faint acoustic guitar, “U Got It Bad” captures the tension of a topsy-turvy love where petty, explosive arguments turn into longing for resolution. USHER’s conviction in moments like these suggests that he’s pulling from a real place, but the album isn’t just delightful because he’s more seasoned in terms of heartache. Some of 8701’s marquee moments place you squarely in the centre of an intensely lit dance floor, hazy from sweat and mist. “I Don’t Know”, for instance, features a barrage of intergalactic synths from The Neptunes while Diddy offers some conversational swaggering, and USHER’s angelic falsetto adds dimension; it’s the kind of song that you run back a few times to focus on a different element of its DNA. The swing and funk interwoven into the production of “Good Ol’ Ghetto” channels the butter-smooth personas of Southern heavyweights of the day like 8Ball & MJG or UGK. More than any of his albums before it, 8701 framed an USHER for the future, an artist who’d developed all the necessary tools during his early years but was now ready to crystallise those into something full-proof.

  • My Way (25th Anniversary Edition)
    My Way (25th Anniversary Edition)
    My Way (25th Anniversary Edition)

    USHER entered public consciousness in the early ’90s as a smooth, baby-faced teenager whose lack of vocal bass didn’t quite match up with the sexual undertones of his music. His 1994 self-titled debut was foundational in furthering Combs’ development of a new R&B sound that took production cues from hip-hop—but much of the album felt like an artist figuring out his sound in real time. When he returned three years later with a deeper voice, a jawline that was no longer boyishly round, and musical direction from Atlanta producer extraordinaire Jermaine Dupri, the Usher Raymond we’ve grown to know and adore was introduced to the world. His sophomore album, My Way, traded those overtly hip-hop beats from The Hitmen for more fitting silky arrangements from Dupri and R&B maestro Babyface, which made a world of difference. “After that first album, I really decided that I wanted to do things my way,” USHER told Apple Music’s Estelle in 2022, and he found the inspiration and validation to do so in the form of—who else?—Frank Sinatra. “Hearing him tell his story, hearing him express how, ‘Hey, listen, good, bad or whatever it might be, I did it my way.’ To me, that's where I was in my life at the age of 16, 17. It was almost like the permission that I needed. So I was like, ‘I want to name this album My Way. I want to have something that I can say I'm proud of.’” On the album’s lead track “You Make Me Wanna…” USHER convincingly built on the soul music tradition of bellowing out to a prospective lover who makes you reconsider the lacklustre relationship you’re currently enduring—a concept he landed on after being stymied by a Dupri beat. “Me and my homie were playing basketball outside,” he said. “I had a Jeep back then, so I would crank the record up, playing out in the middle of the street, and would just listen to this track over and over and over again, like, ‘Yo, what do you think this is making you feel?’ He's like, ‘I don't know. I ain't never heard nothing like this. This shit is crazy.’ So I came back to the studio. I was like, ‘Yo, after about three days of listening, I don't know what I want to talk about.’ And then the more we just hung out, kicked it at the studio, he overheard a conversation I was having with this chick—and I'm in a relationship. I'm a scum guy.” “Slow Jam,” a cover of a song that Babyface wrote for Midnight Star in the ’80s, recruited another teenage R&B phenom in Monica for a sultry ballad. And a Lil’ Kim appearance on “Just Like Me” provided USHER with useful grit. A sweet falsetto, guitar strums that acted as ad libs, and dramatic heavy breathing helped “Nice & Slow” effectively melt the hearts of teenage girls through Walkman headphones and radio speakers—but maybe its most seductive move was USHER spelling out his name. “I was really looking for something to introduce myself,” he said. “So I was like, ‘I want a song that's going to spell my name out: They call me U-S-H-E-R R-A-Y-M-O-N-D.’ That was like Snoop's ‘Snoop Dogg’ or Eminem's ‘My Name Is’. For me, it was my introduction to the world over an R&B classic record that people celebrate all over the world.” All throughout My Way, it became clear that he was more than the potential that was teased a few years prior. Now with proven juggernauts in his corner, USHER was becoming the model for a young star in the genre—clean-cut, a big smile, designer goggles cocked to the side of his head, and a voice that resonated with Black youth. More than two decades after USHER found his voice, he had a clear sense of what the album meant, not just to him personally, but to pop music in general. “R&B assists us in all of these other areas, whether it became authentic hip-hop, or rock ’n’ roll, or any of it,” he said. “My version of it is a combination of those things. If you hear a rock guitar in a song, that doesn't make it a rock song, that makes it a rock solo. If you hear a rap in a song, that doesn't make it a rap song, that makes it a song that has new arms and connects with a bigger audience. So My Way gave me that opportunity to spread my wings and also to explore some things that I was inspired by.”

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About USHER

Few moments define USHER's career quite like that night in September 2001, when he stood opposite Michael Jackson at a sold-out Madison Square Garden and shared a dance. USHER juked, Jackson followed suit, the two traded moves. "I love you!" Jackson said, pointing. "I love you!" USHER replied, pointing back. It turns out USHER might be the closest thing we have to Jackson since Jackson himself—a singer, songwriter, actor, dancer and consummate performer whose appeal seems to transcend genre and demographics. A pop star who's hovered in the spotlight for three decades running, with little sign of slowing down. Born Usher Raymond IV in 1978, and raised in Chattanooga and Atlanta, USHER started his career at age 10, making the rounds and honing his craft on Atlanta-area talent shows. See him on Star Search, circa 1991, singing Boyz II Men's "End of the Road", wading through a sea of admirers ("I was a ham," he joked later). That performance led almost instantaneously to a deal with LaFace Records, then home to TLC and Toni Braxton, with USHER releasing his self-titled debut album when he was just 15. He went on to become one of the most bulletproof figures in pop, capable of straddling club music (2004's "Yeah!"), ballads (2004's "Confessions Part II"), boundary-pushing R&B (2012's "Climax") and the kind of borderless, big-tent anthems everyone seems to agree on (2008's "Love in This Club"). His 2004 album, Confessions, reportedly inspired by his breakup with TLC star Chilli, went not just Platinum but Diamond; his 2010 single "OMG" made him only the fifth artist in history to have U.S. No. 1 singles in three consecutive decades—behind, among others, Michael Jackson. In late 2018, he celebrated his 40th birthday by releasing "A", his ninth studio album. Additionally, USHER has also acted (in television, in movies, on Broadway), taken an ownership stake in the Cleveland Cavaliers, mentored a young Justin Bieber and worked on both American Idol and The Voice, all while maintaining a steady presence in a variety of philanthropic causes. Alongside Alicia Keys, H.E.R., will.i.am, Ludacris, Lil Jon and Jermaine Dupri, USHER commanded the world's biggest stage as the featured performer at the 2024 Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show. USHER parlayed the momentum of his Super Bowl performance to unload COMING HOME, his first solo album since 2016's Hard II Love. Laced with features from Atlanta stalwarts like Summer Walker, 21 Savage and Latto, the LP lives up to its title. Sonically and thematically, the project features spurts of electronic and more linear R&B, making it a seamless blend of USHER sounds from varying eras, simultaneously modern and nostalgic. Like his career itself, it's threaded by musical dynamism and a supple tenor that has connected generations.

HOMETOWN
United States of America
BORN
14 October 1978
GENRE
R&B/Soul

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