Then “Monstar” picks up the pace quickly, for better or for worse. Raymond opens with a sort of deceleration to his listeners that there are multiple sides to every story. Well this new album presents Usher post-divorce as a 31 year old R&B star presenting where he is now. Though Here I Stand was considered weak by some people’s standards, I found it presented Usher at a particular point in his life. While the album may largely be an effort to recapture former glories, it`s the brief periods when usher looks to the next that will demonstrate the most enduring.Usher is trying to get his mojo back with his new album Raymond v. Raymond v Raymond can mostly be divided into two halves, self-pitying ballads that draw heavily on the R&B sound of the preceding ten and upbeat club numbers that, by and large, offer something different and yet exciting. It features a distraught usher who, after accepting the end of his union and turn into “the man that I never thought I`d be”, croons: “I`m ready to mark them papers, papers, papers.” It points to a layer of self-absorption that renders parody useless.
Special mention deserves to be granted to Papers, a call that boasts one of the strangest and almost 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 office 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 present with a verse reminiscent of vintage Lil` Kim. The album`s salvation arrives in the sort of the club hit Lil Freak. Usher`s devotional murmurings sound empty and stilted and the pace is so dense that the song practically hibernates its way out of the speakers. Likewise Hey Daddy (Daddy`s Home) manages to obviate the downright slushiness of his similarly paced love songs.īut so the cloying ballad There Goes My Baby arrives and the singer uses up nearly all of the goodwill gained from the album`s opening tracks. The opener Monstar borrows from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to make 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 desire of recapturing some of that success.īut despite the somewhat cynical approach, the bizarre focus on legal documentation (more on that later) and a propensity to mix self-pity with vulgarity in an effort to appear boyish and alluring, Raymond v Raymond is really rather listenable. The LP didn`t just cement the singer`s reputation as R&B`s number-one heartbreak kid – it sold 20 million albums worldwide.īy contrast, the final 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.
If you`re getting a notion of deja vu, that`s because back in 2004 he released Confessions – also a break-up album, that sentence from TLC`s Chilli. It sees the R&B lothario (real name usher Raymond IV) pondering his break from wife Tameka Foster and few stones are left unturned: it`s a narration of love, loss and legal issues.
USHER RAYMOND VS RAYMOND TORRENT MOVIE
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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