The song manages to be both dull and interminable. Then there’s “OMG”, the latest incoherent madness from will.i.am.
He just ends up sounding like a dirty old man. Kelly schtick on “Lil Freak”, featuring the latest terrible female rapper, Nicky Minaj. Clearly, aging out of the industry’s targeted demographic has got Usher shook. To be fair, there are some nice moments here - “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home)” and “Fooling Around” are pleasant, if forgettable, and “There Goes My Baby” features some nice falsetto work from Ursh - but most of this album feels like an artist struggling to hold onto relevance.
Before this album dropped, I would have said that Usher was the most consistently brilliant pop star in a generation, able to perfectly marry commercial ambition with superb songcraft. That they are true is what makes listening to this cynically commercial and desperate album such a tremendous disappointment. Raymond is an album that was created as if the three points I raise above are not true. Here I Stand failed commercially for one reason, and one reason only: his fanbase hated his wife. It was a huge artistic leap forward that managed to transform the R&B king into a stone-cold soulman. Here I Stand was a damn near flawless album, with 8 perfect songs (“This Ain’t Sex”, “His Mistakes”, “Lifetime”, “Will Work for Love”, “Trading Places”, and especially “Love You Gently,” “Revolver”, and the title track) and at least another 4 or 5 pretty good songs. But promoting it as such did make it a huge commercial success.Ģ. Confessions really was not all that confessional. There are three important things one must recognize in order to properly understand why Usher’s latest album, Raymond vs.
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