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

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

I apologise to all the indie fans of Foster the People that enjoy skinny chinos and drinking cider in the park with your t-shirts displaying a whitty remark but this is good. 1. He is playing bass, in the interview after this he spoke of learning to play the bass at about 13 and how it influenced a lot of his music. 2, it is a cover, so he can do what he wants with the song. The heavy guitar rifts work so well with the gospel type keyboards and 3, Usher is some top bloke. xox

chormeholmes 6 hours ago

heavy guitar rifts work so well with the gospel type keyboards

I'd never thought of it, but yeah, those elements are always an a+ dope combination.

This is far from embarrassing. Depends on what place "Pumped Up Kicks" has in your heart.

Hi. Finally registered:

- Re: Born This Way — I am on record as liking the album more than most people (check my ballot), but for chrissakes, the last thing you can argue about it is not having a coherent aesthetic. (If your point is that the sales figure was inflated, it wasstill unquestionably one of the largest albums of the year.)

- Re: 4 — If this had come out in 2012 you’d have a case for “Run the World” being trend-jacking, but it was released right on the cusp of Diplo becoming the go-to producer for everybody. Plus, as was said, it’s one track (the last track) and thoroughly unrepresentative.

- Re: Up! — Even if this weren’t such a bizarre special case (two “separate albums” in three “separate styles,” though in practice they aren’t all that different), it’s not really what I’m talking about. The red disc and green disc (and blue disc) were all coherent enough in their own ways. To be comparable, Twain would have to have released one album with a couple red and green and blue tracks coexisting unhappily, with yellow and orange and, I dunno, ultraviolet ones elsewhere. Same goes for Private Dancer — charting on different formats is an effect, not a cause. I mean, “Rolling in the Deep” charted everyfuckingwhere, but that doesn’t mean 21 isn’t a coherent album.

- Re: my being dull-minded and predictable and deaf: Sorry.

Wow, this title track is really Empire of the Sun-ish. I would not have recognized this as Usher. Don't think it suits him really...

ha welcome to ilx, katherine! i liked the piece, sorry you had to come and post just because you were getting beat up over it.

Wow, this title track is really Empire of the Sun-ish

THAT'S who I was trying to think of!

Yeah, I liked Katherine's piece as well. I think the point she's getting at with cultivating multiple audiences simultaneously through different production and music styles makes sense if you've been following these dynamics closely over the past couple years in pop, r'n'b and hip-hop as a fan. The argument might be a tricky to grasp otherwise since, as she points out, eclectic genre-jumping within major releases is certainly nothing new. But somehow with this development, each song stands so independent of an overarching album that the entire thing seems to add up to less than the sum of its parts.

In any case, one of the strengths of the article is that this isn't just reduced to the MP3/Spotify-era of listening (although that's a part of it, certainly). Maybe it's just that all these changes with consuming music have set off a deeper set of dynamics now. I have to say that Usher getting inspiration from Coachella to make a record this way strikes me as weird.

i dunno i can totally picture Usher going to some big rock festivals and raves and being like "what? there are people in the western world who care about music besides Usher's music? something must be done!"

lol