Let's Anticipate Usher's "Looking 4 Myself"

i like "lemme see" but rick ross's trayvon martin reference nearly wrecks it in a single line

what is Rick Ross's appeal btw

as far as i can tell it's because he's popular and ergo important

idg what this backlash is all about, the "he put out a dance-leaning pop album that isn't terrible" narrative is p fun and worthwhile compared to "washed up r&b classicist puts out a by-the-numbers brick for the moms" ad nauseum

"Dive" is also fantastic

it's nice after years of enduring "Let's Make Love In This Club"-style bullshit to be reminded that Usher is actually capable of singing a song

o_O "What Happened To U"!

If you'd told me several years ago that in 2012 I would be totally loving new Usher ballads, I would have hurt myself laughing at you

I don't know why the Drake imitation on the pre-chorus of this song doesn't irritate me, although I'm guessing it's because it's undercut by the falsetto riffing floating over it

http://soundcloud.com/matchstick-1/usher-scream-exemen-remix

good little wookie mix of 'scream' for filing under more rehabilitative ukg magic btw

... why does "Looking 4 Myself" sound like a discarded Pink song

i was wavering on "looking 4 myself" until i saw someone compare it to phoenix, at which point i was just like "yes, i'll take it!"

i like "lemme see" but rick ross's trayvon martin reference nearly wrecks it in a single line

― kanye kardashian (lex pretend), Wednesday, June 13, 2012 3:39 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark

it's obviously a weird fit, but hey, he threatens to kill george zimmerman, so i'm okay with it

kind of got distracted but the back half of the album was pleasant, not overly arresting

I am still kind of shocked that I just enjoyed a post-2004 Usher album

btw "lemme see" is one of the best usher singles in a long while

did you listen to the version w/the bonus tracks dan?

"Lemme See" is terrible, much prefer the other new Ross/Usher single

who's overrating this btw? has it been called a masterpiece in some quarters?

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 13, 2012 3:34 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark

masterpiece, but generally very positive reviews in the voice, SPIN, gawker etc

idk, i guess i understand why people feel good about it, just seems like they hype accelerated very quickly for an album that is very imperfect

that said, rtc's rebuttal has plenty of merit

btw "lemme see" is one of the best usher singles in a long while

that doesn't automatically carry it into the realm of "good song", Usher has been releasing tons and tons of bullshit for almost 8 years

did you listen to the version w/the bonus tracks dan?

Yeah, it seems like Spotify only has the deluxe version

i can't even picture any scenario in which there aren't at least three Raymond Vs. Raymond era singles that aren't better than "Lemme See"

the one thing that's really sticking w/ me here is usher's arbitrary substitution of numbers for letters and letters for words

the album is called 'looking 4 myself', but we also get an "i care for u" and a "what happened to u" and "i.f.u."

i like to think that he didn't go with "i care 4 u" out of respect for aaliyah but i can't figure out his reasoning at all

the one thing that's really sticking w/ me here is usher's arbitrary substitution of numbers for letters and letters for words

See, that's the brilliance of the album. It only seems arbitrary, but it's very deliberate, because this is a record about trying on new hats, searching for the one that fits best. Usher sweats the details.

http://www.hecklerspray.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/usher.jpghttp://adobemaster.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/usher-kufi-hat.jpghttp://blog.amalgamationmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/usher_hat.jpg

but Prince and Sinead already own those hats.

xp

might be time to take my meds again but cant help but feel like 'lemme see' owes a debt to loggins 'danger zone' somewhere imo

I suppose it's churlish to complain when this is a grown man who released a song called "OMG."

right on cue i just read this vg article about this multiple-personality bloated pop album trend - crystallises my thoughts well

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/06/whats-behind-pops-multiplepersonalityalbum-epidemic/258466/

not having read that yet, I feel like pop albums have been like this since the turn of the century

i need to go ahead and give this album a listen when i'm not in a foul mood because i think my mindstate the time i listened to it tainted my perception

this album's small (and yes, imperfect) gestures towards outwitting that article's dull-minded and predictable conclusion is exactly what i like about it

multi-producer albums have been standard for a long time but albums with different sections aimed at completely different radio formats are a somewhat new development.

The comments in lex's review are awesome

Modern day RnB is a breeding ground for talentless individuals who can't do anything creative. Nicky Minaj, Lil'wayne, Drake, Rihanna, David Guetta...the list is endless.

No, making every song about being in a club and finding that girl and falling in love with her is not creative, it's been done to absolute death in the last decade (probably further back).

Just because you and every other idiot likes to fist pump to a song on a Saturday night, and grind girls to it because god forbid you'd have to talk to one, doesn't make it good. And the fact that this music only gets popular from places where people are pissed out of their faces says everything.

While this sort of scattershot album-making is unusual for established acts like Minaj or Usher

what?

But lots of albums in the last twenty years (Tina Turner's Private Dancer being ground zero and Shania's Up the apotheosis) have scored hits helmed by producers aiming at specific formats. The Turner album scored an album rock radio hit that didn't chart anywhere else, for example.

closer to thirty

It's not clear they need to, though. Many of 2011's most acclaimed and, in some cases, best-selling pop albums were those with deliberate, cohesive aesthetics: Beyoncé's mature and trend-dodging R&B of 4, Adele's retromaniac 21, Drake's moodily produced Take Care, or Lady Gaga's dance/rock/metal fusion on Born This Way

is this writer intentionally attempting to undermine every point she is trying to make or is she deaf

haha Beyonce's album being held up as so much more cohesive than these others is insane

Beyonce's anti-trend-dodging album with its "Pon De Floor"-based lead single

er trend-chasing, I'm tired and hungry

'run the world' was a misstep and is irrelevant to the fact that 4 is a cohesive album despite the genre shifts on the face of it

the nature and future of what can constitute cohesion is precisely the issue at hand

hahaha wait, are you seriously trying to play the "I'm going to pretend the song I dislike doesn't exist so that my argument makes sense" card?

can we return to discussing how good "What Happened to U" is

no all i'm saying is that distortively painting an album out by its one wild abberation is a very different thing to the other big grab-bag albums being discussed

djp waving his dull little blade in the middle of the gunfight as usual

So yes, you are playing that card.

tha fuck?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUQoo-F5OLA

haha whut

dude plays bass and this is how he chooses to show us?

ya rly

http://www.thefader.com/2012/06/12/usher-high-note/

I fucking hate that we didn’t have a camera rolling when we created it, because it was so cool how it happened. Redd Stylez [another “Climax” co-writer], myself and Ariel, we just kept talking about it and I kept throwing the melodies. And then we started jotting the lyrics. Second verse I didn’t even give anybody no time to say anything. I said, I got it, I got it. Instantly. It was a little bit of Coldplay that I pulled from.

How do you translate Coldplay into “Climax?” I never would have heard that. I told you, you never know when it’s gonna be useful. That’s naturally where I went. I don’t know how it worked, but in my vast library of stored musical references, I kind of flipped through and found that one like, Yeah, this would be perfect there.

"vast library of stored musical references" is pretty funny. Album is pretty great

everyone in the R&B and hip-hop world owns Coldplay records

he doesn't even have to own them man