“Yeah!”—Usher

Rob examines the crossroads of Usher’s pop star persona and Lil Jon’s unique vocal and musical genius this week when taking a look back at the smash hit “Yeah!” (1:00). Then, he is joined by Clover Hope to talk about the construction of Usher’s career, the imagery and storytelling that went into making him more interesting to audiences, his staying power, and more (59:00). Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Clover Hope Producers: Jonathan Kermah, Justin Sayles, and Bobby Wagner Additional Production Support: Olivia Crerie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

  I'm Yasi Solak and I'm here to announce a brand new season of my Ringer original podcast, Bands Lane, the show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists to you and yours. This time, babe, we're going across the pond. That's right, I'm absolutely chuffed to be talking about the music scenes of 80s and 90s Britain. I'm talking Madchester, I'm talking baggy, I'm talking shoegaze, I'm talking Brit pop, mate. So tune in every Thursday starting November 7th for a new episode of Bands Lane on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I'm pro-football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit mddallies.com to watch my story.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

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  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. You know what I love about football season? It's the football, but also the football watching food. And nothing hits like a Boar's Head sandwich when I'm watching a game. Really, any game day sandwich better with Boar's Head. Philly cheesesteak, layer up buttery slider rolls with Boar's Head London broil roast beef, American white cheese and picante provolone. Delicious. Then add roasted onions, peppers and Boar's Head pub style horseradish sauce. I love horseradish and you've got the ultimate game day cheesesteak. They've also got a whole lineup of premium meats, cheeses, hummus and dips, condiments and more to serve up on game day. Head to your local Boar's Head deli counter shop now for game day sandwich inspiration and more, visit boar'shead.com. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905.

• 2:48Speaker 05

  To quote Anchorman, "He had a voice that could make a Wolverine purr." To quote Pride and Prejudice, "His countenance, voice and manner had established him at once in the possession of every virtue." To quote Rumi, "Stop the noise and you will hear his voice in silence." To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, "He shouts loud at the top of his voice, 'I am I, me, I am I, and I may not know why, but I know that I like it.'" To quote The Great Gatsby, "He has the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down

• 3:29Speaker 05

  as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again." To quote Deuteronomy, Chapter 4, Verse 36, King James Version, "Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee, and upon earth he shewed thee his great fire, and thou hearest his words out of the midst of the fire." To quote The Odyssey, "King Alcinous, it is a good thing to hear a bard with such a divine voice as this man has." And to quote the man himself, what?

• 4:21Speaker 05

  His name is Jonathan H. Smith. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 17th, 1972. He is a Capricorn. He grew up in large part on punk rock. He got into skateboarding. He got into Bad Brains, The Dead Kennedys, The Faction, The Misfits. He got into 80's live shows by Faith No More and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. He physically got into a great many mosh pits, but he loved rap music, too. NWA, E40, Too Short. As a student at Frederick Douglass High School in Atlanta, he says he listened to the "Life is Too Short" album every day. But he loves southern rap music, too. Atlanta bass music. He was instrumental

• 5:02Speaker 05

  in bringing Atlanta bass music to the world. He got into DJing. He got into the music business. He got into A&R. He got into producing. And one night, he got in a Club 559, Atlanta's legendary Club 559, and he's sitting at a table with 15 or so people, and they all start spontaneously chanting, "Who you wit? Who you wit?" And suddenly, everyone in the club is chanting, "Who you wit? Who you wit?" along with them. And in that moment, the world first truly heard the words of Lil Jon out of the midst of the fire.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  Lil Jon says that night, at that table at Club 559, he became an artist by accident. He knew he had to make a record, a song called "Who You Wit," released in 1996 as the debut single from Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys. The Eastside Boys are Big Sam and Lil Bo. That's Eastside Boys with a Z. "What do you call this sort of music? This combination of the call and response hookiness of rap music with the raw heedless physicality of punk music, powered by short, pulverizing, blunt-force repetition phrases that slowly acquire the wisdom and power of Zen cones." Lil Jon's got a suggestion.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Now, of course, Lil Jon did not invent this term "crunk", which had been banging around Atlanta and the larger southern rap lexicon for some time already. OutKast, Andre 3000 raps the word "crunk" on the first OutKast album on 1994's Southern Playlist at Cadillac Music, on OutKast's debut single, in fact, on "Players Ball". If you recall, "Players Ball" was originally a Christmas song, but OutKast were like, "Yeah, we don't want to do a Christmas song", which explains Andre's dismissive near-reference to "Silent Night" and the official version of the song now. It's important context.

• 7:31Speaker 05

  So yeah, that's cool, but you know the first person to use the term "crunk" in print? Look at that, Dr. Seuss. Yes, in his 1972 book Marvin K. Mooney, "Will You Please Go Now", one of the bitchier Dr. Seuss books, if we're being honest, like GTFO, the book. Dr. Seuss deploys the term "crunk car", "crunk hyphen car", why did Dr. Seuss name this particular vehicle a "crunk car"? He may not have known why, but he knew that he liked it.

• 8:07Speaker 06

  You can go on stilts.

• 8:10Speaker 06

  You can go by fish.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  You can go in a crunk car if you wish.

• 8:20Speaker 05

  That's just a kid on YouTube, reading Marvin K. Mooney, "Will You Please Go Now", or perhaps it's an AI kid. I can't tell, it better not be AI. If you're curious what a crunk car looks like in the Dr. Seuss universe, in the book, it's a blue, roughly giraffe-sized contraption with two giant legs, two gears, two exhausts. Exhaust pipes, one giant lever, the gear shift presumably, and a steering wheel. But it will fall to Lil' Jon, accidental artist, to popularize this term, "krunk", to rebrand it, to embody it, to expand its spiritual purview, and to introduce this revamped idea of "krunk" to the wider world, i.e. white people.

• 9:05Speaker 05

  And he undertakes this project in earnest on the debut album from Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boys, released in 1997 and called "Get Krunk Who You Wit the Album", that's "Get Krunk, Who You Wit, the Album", we are already beginning to expand the spiritual purview of the word "what" as well.

• 9:37Speaker 05

  And from this moment forward, Lil' Jon transforms himself into a pop star. Now, before we go any further, let's acknowledge an obvious, personal dissonance between this person's voice and my voice, between myself and Lil' Jon. It may shock you to hear this, but I don't go to the club.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  I don't go to the club. I am past the age at which one traditionally goes to the club. To be clear, I also did not go to the club even when I was at the age at which one traditionally goes to the club, but I extra don't go to the club now. My current total absence from the club is more understandable. But so now, how can I properly describe and contextualize and celebrate music that was very, very, very clearly inspired by and designed for the club when I personally did not and do not go to the club? Well, recently, I decided to listen to this music

• 10:45Speaker 05

  in the closest environment to the club that was readily accessible to me. I replicated the ideal context for this music to the best of my abilities. So what did I do? I'll tell you what I did. I put in my AirPods and I put on a four hour crunk playlist while watching my oldest son's middle school wrestling match.

• 11:19Speaker 05

  Now, let's not belabor the many similarities between the club and a middle school wrestling match. That song, of course, is Get Low from the 2002 Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys album, Kings of Crunk. This song, of course, features the Ying Yang Twins, the Atlanta duo of Kane and D-Rock. Though there are many similarities, yes, between the club and a middle school wrestling match. The tremendous and often quite awkward physicality, the disconcerting crush of bodies, the jumble of limbs, the cacophony of voices, the preponderance of sweat, the confusing point system, the general confusion as to what one's ultimate goal might

• 11:59Speaker 05

  be and how that goal might be achieved, the especially baffling hand gestures, the energized and often downright rowdy spectators, the snack bar. I am presuming that the club is some sort of snack bar, or at least you can buy chips at the regular bar. They got appetizers, jalapeno poppers, I don't know, sliders. I am speculating, obviously, when it comes to certain aspects of the club. And I'm sitting there on the bleachers of some middle school in some part of Ohio I ain't never been in, in some town I ain't never even heard of, and I got no idea how the sport of wrestling works exactly. And I got my AirPods going and rowdy dudes from Atlanta are screaming just riotously, unseemly shit directly into

• 12:44Speaker 05

  my ears and my ears alone.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  And I'm doing the thing I do, right? Where I'm like, nobody else sitting with me on these bleachers knows what I'm listening to. I am just a tremendously subversive and dangerous and intimidatingly cool person. And that is obviously mega corny, but I do feel like this experiments. This environment gives me a new appreciation for this music, the simplicity, the intensity, the occasionally implicit, but more often quite explicit violence, the raucous exhilaration, the mosh pit adjacency, and the palpable unease too. The sort of wincing, concerned, ugh, of it all, as I watch various 13-year-olds arbitrarily

• 13:41Speaker 05

  smash one another's heads into a rolled-out gym mat at center court of a middle school gymnasium as their parents shout indecipherable instructions from the bleachers. My role here as a bewildered onlooker, as a clueless spectator, as a wallflower? I imagine that this would be my mentality and my role in the club as well, had I ever set foot in the club. But at least this wrestling match I'm watching right now qualifies as, you know, a wholesome extracurricular activity. Turns out my kid's not even wrestling today, but I'll cheer for his whole team. Sure, come on Blake or Mason or Aiden or whatever your name is, put him in a headlock or whatever.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  I assume this sort of thing builds character, putting people in headlocks and getting put in headlocks yourself, invaluable life experience. This song is called Damn, exclamation point, released in 2003 by Young Bloods, the Atlanta duo of J. Bo and Sean Paul. The Y, B, and concluding Z in Young Bloods are all capitalized. The monosyllabic synthesizer line.

• 15:02Speaker 05

  The electric fence jolt of

• 15:06Speaker 05

  there is a fine art and elegance and exquisite sophistication to building a musical backdrop this simple and repetitive that holds up for this long that builds momentum and force as it goes. In addition to producing and co-writing this track, Lil Jon is also heavily featured on Damn. And I do think heavily featured is the proper way to describe Lil Jon's contribution to any track, even if his contribution consists of the word hey. Though, of course, in this case, Lil Jon also raps slash chants slash screams slash grunts slash bellows many additional words.

• 16:01Speaker 05

  If I ever run for president, this will be my nine-word approach to foreign policy. Don't start no shit, it won't be no shit. I have to say, I tremendously enjoyed this experience, my little crunk wrestling excursion. And I intend to watch all my sons wrestling matches like this going forward. So to all my fellow wrestling parents out there, if you see me perched on the bleachers, shoveling Sour Patch Kids from the snack bar into my mouth and rocking vigorously from side to side, don't let any of your other kids snatch the AirPods out of my ears, lest they be scandalized by whatever uncouth jam I happen to be listening to at the time.

• 16:54Speaker 05

  I guess what I'm saying is, don't start no shit, it won't be no shit. That's the Ying Yang Twins again. That's Salt Shaker from 2003, featuring Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys. This initial monster run Lil Jon goes on in the early and mid 2000s. As an artist, a songwriter, a producer, a tastemaker, a one-man genre, it's really, truly something. How this dude was suddenly permanently everywhere, working with everyone on every song, blowing up the radio. Let's not play favorites, but yeah, never mind. This one's still my favorite.

• 17:40Speaker 05

  Hey, look, it's Lil Jon producing and co-writing for his old high school favorite, "Too Short." The mayor of Oakland, the S in short is a dollar sign. "Too Short's" campaign slogan is just one word, but I'd rather not tell you what that word is. That's "Blow the Whistle" from 2006. I think this one's still my favorite because this song was described to me before I heard it. I was living in Oakland and my buddy Garrett was like, "You hear this new Too Short song, 'Blow the Whistle'?" And I'm like, "Nah." And Garrett's like, "Yeah, man, it's awesome." He goes, "Blow the whistle." "Do, do, do, blow the whistle." "Do, do, do." And I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds pretty good." And it does, in an additional fascinating, super impressive, almost noble aspect of

• 18:23Speaker 05

  the Lil Jon radio takeover, is that whether he's the guy yelling, or he's just the producer and songwriter, this guy makes pop songs that don't compromise themselves trying to be pop songs. He does not compromise. He does not overreach. He does not water himself down. His songs work as pop songs naturally, organically, because they are, inevitably, and somewhat paradoxically, pleasing to the ear. Four adverbs in one sentence, and the more absurd this paradox, this perfect pop song that doesn't behave like a pop song paradox, the more pleasing the song becomes. I had myself a delightful time recently, driving to the post office while listening

• 19:05Speaker 05

  to the 2002 Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys album, "Kings of Crunk." And I was like, "Is he yelling over the requiem for a dream soundtrack right now?"

• 19:32Speaker 05

  I do believe that's Lil Jon shouting, "Throw it up, motherfucker, throw it up", over a sample of the Kronos Quartet's version of Lux Eterna, which features prominently in the fucking, super traumatizing 2000 film Requiem for a Dream, which I watched exactly once and do not wish to think about ever again. But Lil Jon makes it bearable, doesn't he? Driving to the post office is not an activity in an environment similar to going to the club, but I had to pick up my mail. All this and we skipped Lil Jon's prehistory. His early and tremendously impactful pre-artist stint as just a background music industry player,

• 20:14Speaker 05

  as an A&R guy for Atlanta's So So Def Recordings in the 90s. So So Def was started by the producer and mogul and Atlanta legend Jermaine Dupri. Lil Jon's first project for the label just so happens to be a sneaky pick for best album of the 90s. The 1996 compilation, So So Def: Bass All Stars. Put this shit on at your next cookout and somebody's gonna get pregnant and/or arrested.

• 20:51Speaker 05

  That's Playa Poncho in L.A. Snow with a song called What's Up, What's Up? But this was the one, right? This was the shock smash hit, the paradigm shift, the enduring favorite, the present day viral sensation, the all-timer. Yes, yes.

• 21:26Speaker 05

  My Boo, the one and only hit, the one and only song by ghost town DJs. My Boo is the one. My Boo is eternal. The incredible, the life-changing harmony that hits on Be Your Lady, Baby.

• 21:42Speaker 05

  This is a pop song that can make you levitate. And it is a pop song. It is an immaculate, all time great pop song. It is an Atlanta bass song that became a pop song. But to Lil Jon's mind, it became a pop song so huge that it crushed Atlanta bass music. Back in March 2024, Lil Jon did a lengthy, delightful and grossing interview with a New York Times PopCast Deluxe. And Lil Jon said, quote, "When we did My Boo, it changed the dynamic of the music." Because then it was so freaking big that everyone now wanted to do a singing hook. So I think that was the death of bass music because everybody started to try to want to chase that." End quote.

• 22:28Speaker 05

  And this is crucial to the greatness and the thoughtfulness of Lil Jon. That he makes gigantic pop hits, but he is hyper conscious of what a gigantic pop hit can do to a fragile regional ecosystem. The ruinous domino effect of feeble copycats a hit can inspire. The precious originality that can bleed out of a vital subculture when one song dominates the landscape. He respects the culture. He's careful to preserve the culture. If you give a damn, he gives a fuck. And Lil Jon knows that sometimes a bonkers blockbuster pop hit is more trouble than it's worth. But sometimes, the guy can't help himself.

• 23:25Speaker 05

  My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 12th episode of 60 Songs That Explained the 90s, Cole and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing Usher's "Yeah." Also featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris. "Yeah," of course, appears on Usher's Bonkers Blockbuster 2004 album, Confessions. "Yeah," of course, also served as the dramatic conclusion to Usher's 2024 Super Bowl halftime performance. That's "Yeah!" exclamation point. And it's hard to think of a song more deserving of an exclamation point. Try to think of one right now and we'll be right back.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard fought place. They're all jammed inside every can of NOS Energy. High-performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal to the metal human horsepower for the streets. Go ahead, crack open a can of NOS Energy and get after it.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  How you doing? I really have mastered the ad break. It's inspiring, really. Did you use that ad break productively? Did you think of a better, more deserving song with an exclamation point in the title? Man exclamation point, I feel like a woman exclamation point by Shania Twain? That's a good one, too. That's got two exclamation points, but that one ain't got Lil Jon. Okay, but so Usher, right? You familiar with Usher? We better get right into it. Usher Raymond IV is born in Dallas, Texas on October 14th, 1978. He's a Libra.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  He grows up mostly in Chattanooga, Tennessee, raised primarily by his mother, Janetta. When Usher is 12 years old, Janetta also becomes Usher's manager and she will remain her son's manager for the next 17 years. Usher grows up singing in church. He grows up thinking maybe he'll become a preacher, but as a 10-year-old, he joins an R&B quintet called New Beginning. And that doesn't amount to much, but by the time he hits his teens and his mother's moved the family to Atlanta for career-type reasons, Usher gets to thinking that, yeah, maybe he'd rather be an R&B star. Usher signs with La Face Records, the label co-founded by big shot music executive L.A.

• 25:48Speaker 05

  Reid and big shot R&B star Babyface. Usher auditions for L.A. Reid and Babyface by singing, what song do you think? This is easy somehow. You know what song, instinctively you know what song Usher auditioned with.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  Once you know that Usher got a record deal by singing "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men, there is no other possible song Usher could have sung in that situation. I can't explain it, but you get it. It is entirely logical. Young Usher struggles somewhat with puberty. Usher later tells Rolling Stone, quote, "Looked like a damn machine gun hit my face. Then I got acne medicine that made me all light and shit." End quote. That's a 2004 Rolling Stone cover story. Thank you very much. In which Usher also says, quote, "I sold millions of albums in my time and never been on the cover of Rolling Stone before? Shoot, I thought they don't put black faces on those covers." End quote.

• 27:07Speaker 05

  That's good. I like this guy. Anyway, he's got hella pimples. His voice is changing. He punches a wall. The vibe is grim. And so the face records sends young, flustered, acne-ridden Usher out to New York City, where he flourishes under the tutelage of, uh, shit, Puff Daddy. Uh, let's not get bogged down in the Puff Daddy of it all. Shall we? Let's not and say we didn't. Usher's debut album, called Simply Usher, is released in August 1994. He is 15 years old and sounds like it. And in fact, he sounds more 15 the more he tries to sound like he's not 15.

• 28:03Speaker 05

  This song is called "Can You Get With It." The "you" there just being the letter "U" in evoking prints even typographically is awfully brazen at this stage. And "I promise you when I'm ready that I'll spend my life with you" is not the world's most reassuring promise, romantically speaking, but a song with a pre-chorus this heavily can get away with a lot. No?

• 28:47Speaker 05

  You might levitate just for a second when the harmonies hit. On I don't have much money. Okay, but so it's only a sexual thing. That's direct. That's honest. That's dissonant. Is it dissonant? Maybe it's not dissonant at all. I use the term, I said the words sex jam like 400 times in one episode of Bandplain. Don't look it up. And I made a solemn vow to myself to never use that term again. But this song is a love song about how Usher is not nearly old enough to convincingly sing a love song yet. But he's got some ideas for how to pass the time in the meantime.

• 29:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, we got it. This song, Can You Get With It, is written and produced by Devonte Swing of R&B giants Jodeci. But notably, Timbaland also gets a production credit, a very young, pre-superstardom Timbaland, back in the unhappy-for-him era when he worked, when he toiled for Devonte Swing as part of the ill-fated Swing Mob. This song is pure, uncut 1994. Yes, the slow jam, the little yo-yo flute-sounding hook, boo, the heavy Jodeci vibes, the heavy Boys to Men vibes. 1994, Mary J. Blige's My Life is huge, Brandy's first album is huge,

• 30:19Speaker 05

  R&B is huge. R&B is a force, a powerhouse, a self-sufficient entity. This debut Usher record is indeed co-executive produced by one Puff Daddy. And so there are blatant pop aspirations. There's blatant hip-hop swagger. There is intriguing crossover potential. But you get the sense that Usher very explicitly wants to be an R&B singer, an R&B star. Not a throwback necessarily, but Usher sees himself as part of a lineage and he's casting back to what? To Stevie Wonder, to Marvin Gaye, to Sam Cooke, to Al Green, even when the music is aggressively pushing him forward.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  This song is called "Think of You." That is Biz Markie's voice providing the "Yes, yes, y'all" to the beat y'all there, sampled from the 1988 Big Daddy Kane song, "Just Rhymin' with Biz." But going forward, the battle between hip-hop and R&B, the fate of R&B going forward, as hip-hop gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, this always struck me as a central conflict in Usher's music, the present and the future of his music. It's a fight, it's a battle, it's a war. It's an existential clash between R&B and hip-hop, R&B and pop. Pushed far enough forward at 2010 or so, and the fights between R&B and EDM. Usher is malleable, he is curious, he is adventurous.

• 31:55Speaker 05

  Musically, he goes where the action is, and he is often crucial in expanding our sense of where the action can be. But no matter what noises you arrange around him, I will always partly hear Usher as a throwback, as an old soul, as a guy who wants to dance like Michael Jackson and sing like Donny Hathaway. This is a person who always sounds contemporary. But somehow, simultaneously, sometimes you put on an Usher song and you forget what year it is.

• 32:38Speaker 05

  This song is called "I Will", and it is perhaps not the first song you think of when you think of Usher's sophomore album, released in 1997 and called "My Way", but it might be the first song I think of. Maybe it's just the pricing there that makes me forget what year it is. Those are 50s and 60s prices for thoughts and kisses. Those are Jackie Wilson prices. Usher also left soul and R&B legend Jackie Wilson, aka Mr. Excitement. Usher is praised for his quote- Surprisingly voracious music curiosity end quote in a 1998 vibe cover story in which Usher says, quote, "I was always the kid that would just sit by the radio at sleepovers.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  They'd be like, come on, come play hide and go seek, but I'd want to stay up and hear the slow jams on the radio because they didn't play those songs during the day." End quote. Usher appears on this cover of Vibe posing shirtless and a large body of water next to the headline Wet Dream. I just thought I'd mention that. The My Way album intends to bombard you with songs so ludicrously horny that they can only safely be played at night.

• 34:10Speaker 05

  Take for example, this ludicrously horny song called Nice and Slow, which coincidentally, it's not a coincidence, coincidentally, this also happens to be Usher's first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart. Usher has huge hit songs now. The self-titled Usher album sold around half a million copies and was somewhat of a disappointment. My Way will eventually sell around seven million copies and not be a disappointment. Usher is a pop star now. My Way is produced primarily by Babyface, Jermaine Dupri, and Manuel Seal. Babyface and Jermaine Dupri are two giant hitmakers with quite different but

• 34:54Speaker 05

  splendidly complementary vibes. Not to oversimplify, but Babyface is the guy you get to write songs literally called slow jam and bedtime. Jermaine Dupri is the guy who helps you write about how you're dating three women at the same time.

• 35:27Speaker 05

  Oh boy, this is the first track on My Way. It is called "You Make Me Wanna..." And according to the Usher Rolling Stone cover story from 2004, it's about the best relationship he ever had, which involved, he explains, "three women at one time. I knew it was wrong, but it worked for me. I was with one woman who was really supportive, like a backbone. Then there was a homie who knew about the other two, and another where it was sex, sex, sex all the time. The song is about leaving the backbone for the sexy girl, which I did. It didn't work, though. You can't turn a hoe into a housewife." End quote. Well, that's too bad.

• 36:10Speaker 05

  I do think that "You Make Me Wanna" gracefully establishes a core element of the Usher experience. Ideally, in an Usher song, Usher is either describing a time when he screwed up, or he is screwing up right now.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  That last line, in fact, is how I would summarize the thesis of the best Usher songs. "I really need to get it together." And as with all great pop music, soul music, the most exhilarating thrill of all is that you're pretty sure that he ain't never gonna get it together. Jump ahead four years, and Usher is rejecting a lady he likes because she looks too much like another lady he likes.

• 37:15Speaker 05

  This is a stupid reason not to get with someone. It's called having a type. You're lucky that flute riff is so rad, or this song would be pretty exasperating. The video for this song is just Usher cavorting with Rosanda Thomas, AKA Chili from TLC. And they're a fantastic IRL couple, but he's gonna screw that up too. Sheesh dude, you really need to get it together.

• 37:57Speaker 05

  I don't know why I'm taking this song so personally all of a sudden. The song is called "You Remind Me", that's U as in just the letter U. And the typographical Prince echo is a little more justifiable now that he's a big star, isn't it? Plus, we got Prince cohorts Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis producing "You Remind Me", that'll earn you a letter U. This is the lead single off Usher's third album, 8701, released on August 7th, 2001. That's 8701, thus the title. I never knew why Usher called this album 8701, and I had this instinct to not look it up, but I did anyway, and that's disappointing. Honestly, that is just the release date. I wanted it to be the codename for his private chat or something. That'll teach me to do research.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  You know the most important line in this song? It's right at the beginning. It's where Usher tells the woman he's singing what to do while he's singing her the song.

• 39:05Speaker 05

  You need to sit down. This may take a while feels tremendously important to me. Usher issuing a command. Usher doing some scene blocking. Usher posing his audience like he's playing with action figures. There's a striking physical dimension to Usher's songs. A sense that you are being directly addressed and manipulated within the song. That you're in the front row at one of those R and B concerts where the singer pulls a fan on stage and sits them down in a chair and, you know, humps them. Usher's songs feel three dimensional to me. If only in a sense that a mattress is a three dimensional object. Usher's songs feel three dimensional even when all he does is remind you

• 39:47Speaker 05

  that you're listening to a song he is singing to you.

• 40:04Speaker 05

  And I'm going to level with you. I am not even especially touched by the words in this song, which is called You Got It Bad, letter U again, because I am way too busy being enormously emotionally affected by just the tone of Usher's voice, the wailing, the pleading, the raw emotion, the rich text of simply the way Usher moans various o's and no's as the song begins.

• 40:41Speaker 05

  I had never really focused on the wind there also. The quite prominent wind. Do you think that's actual diegetic sampled wind? Or is that just a guy in the studio going into a microphone? It doesn't matter. I have vivid memories of driving around in 2001 and 2002, driving to the club perhaps. Or no, obviously not, maybe the post office though. And You Got It Bad comes on the radio and I am truly startled by the power of Usher's voice, the physical force of it. This melody is like two notes, right? And yet I am mesmerized, still mesmerized, still so mesmerized that the words have not yet fully registered for me. I'm sure these are splendid words.

• 41:26Speaker 05

  I am absolutely positive that they don't matter.

• 41:42Speaker 05

  You Got It Bad really works for me. It really works for me on either a pre-language or a post-language level. Despite the disappointing title origin story, 8701 establishes Usher, here in 2001, as our best-case scenario for pushing R&B into the 21st century, for modernizing R&B, without sacrificing the vital classic eternal core of R&B. He sounds like the future, and he sounds like the kid at the sleepover who just wants to hear some old slow jams on the radio. "You Don't Have to Call" is the best song on this record, though, right? Capital U again. The three big singles on this record are all addressed to capital U, U.

• 42:27Speaker 05

  That feels significant, right? Or that feels significant until the hook of "You Don't Have to Call" hits, whereupon nothing else is remotely significant.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  The Neptunes, ladies and gentlemen, producing this one. "You Don't Have to Call" sounds like the sun is either rising or setting every time the chorus hits. Whichever of those you prefer. All right. All right. Time for the big one. Time for the truly gargantuan album. Time for his first number-one album. We're talking diamond sales, more than 10 million copies sold in America. We're talking an album so big Usher gets to play the Super Bowl. Twenty years later, we're talking thriller numbers, adjusted for the Napster era. Close enough. Usher's fourth album, released in 2004, is called Confessions.

• 43:34Speaker 05

  Talking to Billboard Magazine in 2014, songwriter and producer Jermaine Dupri says, "The topic of interest of people not being interested in Usher, the person, was the main subject matter at that point. The media wasn't completely sold on Usher and Usher's interest inside and outside of the music. How do we make him interesting was the conversation?" End quote. Talking to Complex about this same topic, Jermaine adds, "My whole thing was to raise a ruckus." So, how do we raise a ruckus? How do we make Usher interesting?

• 44:16Speaker 05

  We accentuate the many ways in which Usher still hasn't gotten it together.

• 44:36Speaker 05

  If you're Jermaine Dupri, anyway, you help Usher write two songs called Confessions and Confessions Part Two. This is the first Confessions, the song they initially called "All Bad." "Everything that I've been doing is all bad" is a fantastic way to convey the idea that you still ain't got it together. The goal here, somewhat bizarrely and very specifically, is to make the listener, make the media, make the general public think that Usher is singing explicitly about his recent high-profile breakup with Rosanda Thomas, AKA Chili from TLC. I told you he was gonna screw that up. The goal is to

• 45:19Speaker 05

  turn the whole Confessions album into a tabloid sensation, not just a musical sensation. The goal is to take the word "confessions" literally, or at least Convince everyone that Usher is taking it literally. And I was convinced anyway, which is why I'd be driving to the post office in 2004, 2005, and I'm listening to the radio and I'm wincing inwardly and outwardly for Usher as Usher confesses in lascivious detail that he really, really, really screwed it up this time.

• 46:08Speaker 05

  This is Confessions, part two. And yeah, I totally bought this, that Usher was speaking, was singing, was confessing autobiographically, which he was not. Jermaine Dupri, talking to Vibe Magazine in 2014, confessed, not for the first time, that actually this song was about him. The song was describing a situation in his screwed up personal life. This was Jermaine's confession, designed to sound and feel like Usher's confession. Jermaine says, quote, "We wanted the media to ask us questions. Nobody knows who the fuck Billie Jean is. We're still looking for her," end quote. And Usher's voice sells

• 46:49Speaker 05

  it. Yes, both the tone of his voice and the words themselves this time, contributing once again to the sense of Usher and the woman he's confessing to existing in three-dimensional space. Though probably they're not going to need a mattress this time.

• 47:16Speaker 05

  I really do struggle to think of any pop song I heard on the radio at any point in my life that made me feel worse for the person singing, or made me feel more afraid for the personal well-being of the singer. And this impulse of mine to identify and sympathize with Usher in this situation, that's not great from a male toxicity standpoint. But like, you've heard this guy sing in falsetto, right?

• 47:43Speaker 07

  She opened up the door and didn't want to come near me.

• 47:52Speaker 05

  Pretty great falsetto, ain't it? So this Confessions double shot is a narrative masterstroke, a PR masterstroke. In that the sympathetic slash gullible listener is now inclined to hear all the other songs, to hear this whole album through this prism of real life, super autobiographical pain and regret. Usher is doing Usher-type things at a higher level now, but more importantly, he's operating on a higher scale in terms of celebrity gossip. In the honestly unlikely events that you previously found Usher uninteresting, he has now unequivocally been made interesting. Four adverbs again, and so now perhaps you find yourself sitting by the radio, waiting

• 48:36Speaker 05

  for his slow jams to come on.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  Ladies, tell me, do you understand? Now, all my fellas, do you feel my pain? And lots of us did and do. Or at least 10 million of us bought this record and spent some time thinking it over. This song is called "Burn." In a previous Usher era, "Burn" would have a legitimate shot at being the biggest, the best, the most impactful song on an Usher album. But this is not a previous era. Quick question for you. Are you familiar with this song, "Freak-a-leak"?

• 49:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this song's called "Freak-a-leak." That's double E freak hyphen capital A hyphen double E leak, like the vegetable freak-a-leak. Released by Greenville, North Carolina rapper Petey Pablo in 2003. Can I actually play you the end of the first verse right before that chorus? This is one of the dirtiest and funniest ways to end a first verse that I've ever heard in my life. Earmuffs, kids.

• 50:13Speaker 05

  Cause I ain't drunk enough to do that cracks me up. I'm sorry. That's uncouth. I am aware of how uncouth that is. These are P D Pablo's confessions. Okay. So surprise, Lil Jon produced and co-wrote FreakaLeak. And to give you some idea of how prolific and omnipresent Lil Jon was at this point. Roundabouts 2003, Lil Jon had worked up a bunch of potential beats for Mystical, the New Orleans rapper Mystical, and Mystical passed on most of those beats, including this one. And unbeknownst to Lil Jon, this beat fell into P D Pablo's hands instead. But meanwhile, Lil Jon had brought this beat to Usher and they'd worked up a whole song around this beat.

• 50:54Speaker 05

  But once Lil Jon realized P D Pablo had already claimed this beat for FreakaLeak, Lil Jon was forced to work up a whole new beat for this new Usher song. And so Lil Jon did, because Lil Jon is in possession of every virtue.

• 51:24Speaker 05

  And so Lil Jon and Usher came up with Yeah. Yeah, exclamation point. Yeah, 2.0, I suppose. This was the backup plan, dude. Yeah has seven credited writers and Usher ain't even one of them. Lil Jon, Ludacris, Sean Garrett, Patrick Smith, AKA J Q, Robert McDowell, James Phillips, AKA L Rock, and LaMarcus Jefferson. And yet, Yeah is a deceptively simple musical composition. The riff, the blaring, libidinous, peak Lil Jon synthesizer riff is deceptively, almost offensively, simple.

• 52:10Speaker 05

  But there is, not to repeat myself, but there's a fine art and elegance and exquisite sophistication to building a musical backdrop, this simple and repetitive, that holds up for this long, that builds momentum and force as it goes, but also the decaying slide whistle. Yes, but also the bass, yes, the near absence of bass, the subtle near absence of bass. I listen to When Doves Cry by Prince even now, right? And the whole time it's playing, I'm thinking, there's no bass. There's no bass. I can't believe there's no bass. This is the wildest shit ever. Prince is the raddest dude who ever lived. I've heard When Doves Cry a zillion times,

• 52:55Speaker 05

  and I'm still shocked by it, but the bass on Yeah is ultra minimal. It's basically just the bass kick.

• 53:05Speaker 05

  And then a one second every 10 seconds. Hey, it sounds awesome when they do it.

• 53:27Speaker 05

  The little glass tinkling too. The sonic details here, the minimalism as maximalism. I fixate so much on this stuff on Yeah, a song I have heard at least half a zillion times, that it is somehow never fully registered for me that Usher just sang the words, "Her and my girl used to be the best of homies." Yeah is not R and B in the conventional sense. You will more often see this song described as crunkin' B, which is laborious as genre names go, but it certainly fits. And it is impressive, genuinely, that R and B survives this head-on collision with crunk at all.

• 54:09Speaker 05

  Will John is, shall we say, a strong spice. Crunk as a musical genre, as a philosophy, tends to overwhelm anything and anybody.

• 54:19Speaker 05

  Exposed to it, that Lil Jon and Usher can coexist, can harmonize is miraculous. Jermaine Dupri, talking to Complex in 2014, he admits that "Yeah" scared him. Because "Crunk" wasn't cool yet unless you were Lil Jon. And Usher was not a guy who needed to chase trends. Jermaine says, quote, "I was 100% nervous as hell. It could have changed the whole scope. Because now people hear Usher make records. People have so much shit to say about it. Straight from the people who don't like it. They're like, yo, what the fuck is he doing? When is he gonna start making R&B music again? I felt like this could have happened with "Yeah."

• 55:01Speaker 05

  I felt like they could have been like, what the fuck is wrong with y'all? End quote. Jermaine also says, quote, "The song was incredible, but it didn't have anything to do with Confessions." End quote. Musically, okay, no, but lyrically, even if it blew past me for 20 years or so, "Her and my girl used to be the best of homies." Sounds like Usher is about to do some shit he's gonna have to apologize for later. Yes, this is an "Usher is screwing up right now" song. And this Confessions album doesn't work if there's nothing to confess. Tonight's trip to the club is tomorrow's crushing source of regret. Or so I have read. Can I get your opinion on something?

• 55:46Speaker 05

  Does 300,000 ever bother you?

• 56:01Speaker 05

  Listen, I love Ludacris. I am never unhappy to hear Ludacris. Yet another Atlanta legend. Yet another legendary Atlanta rapper with a remarkably long and magnificently varied career. Ludacris has been to space. But 300,000 bothers me. You don't need the zun. 300 thou works great, doesn't it?

• 56:28Speaker 05

  This bothers me. The thousand is an unpleasantly discordant moment on a song that is entirely composed of improbably pleasant discordance. I just can't complain about this and move on, though. That is disrespectful to Ludacris. You know what I love about Ludacris? His guest verses end well. They end fantastically. They are impeccably punctuated. Ludacris never raps better than when he stops rapping. He escorts you back to a song's hook with unparalleled finesse. Let me show you what I mean.

• 57:05Speaker 07

  Let's drink, you the one to please. Ludacris fill cups like Double D. Me and Usher once more when we leave some dead. We want a lady in the street, but a freak in the bed that say, "Yeah."

• 57:17Speaker 05

  That is a truly phenomenal pop song moment when Ludacris' verse collides perfectly with "Yeah." The glorious dismount of "but a freak in the bed that say, "Yeah," that split second when three pop stars align. And in Usher, Lil Jon, and Ludacris, three pop stars who all, in their own individual, inimitable fashion, redefined what pop stardom could sound and maybe more importantly, act like. I have three more Usher songs to play you in like 60 seconds in which to play them. The GOAT song, the best song, and the other song called "My Boo." Let's do it. Put 60 seconds on the clock. Let's take them in reverse order.

• 58:10Speaker 05

  The special edition of Confessions also includes Usher and Alicia Keys collaborating on the all-time second-best song, "Called My Boo." The Ghost Town DJs still have the best song, "Called My Boo," but they didn't get to play it at the Super Bowl, now did they? Okay, next one. The single-best song Usher has ever released is called "Climax."

• 58:33Speaker 07

  Going nowhere fast, we've reached a climax. We're together, now we're undone. Won't commit, so we choose to run away.

• 58:51Speaker 05

  Climax came out in 2012 and it's co-produced by Diplo of all people and it's the best Usher song ever. I'm sorry, but we don't have time to argue about this. I just played you like the ninth best part of this song. Climax also helpfully provides us with somewhat of a coda. Both Usher and Lil Jon get heavy into EDM when EDM blows up pop wise in the early 2010s. Lil Jon most notably for Turn Down For What, which he also got to perform at the Super Bowl. Climax is unbelievable dude. Best thing Usher ever did. Sorry, no time to discuss. Bring it home. Bring me the goat.

• 59:45Speaker 05

  This is a viral video of a very loud goat combined with the 2009 Usher song Papers. I meant goat song as in the animal, if that wasn't clear. I would be a more sophisticated and possibly a more tolerable person if this video were less funny to me, but as things stand, this video is incredibly funny to me. Though this song Papers was technically written and recorded prior to Usher's divorce, it was widely interpreted as a song about Usher's divorce. And likewise, I would feel worse about laughing at the goat in these circumstances if I were a better person, but let's call this a cautionary tale about how the internet

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  responds if too many of your songs are cathartic, super personal confessions. Maybe Usher overdid it, got too interesting and raised too much of a ruckus, but isn't that what being in the club is all about?

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

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• 1:01:50Speaker 05

  We are delighted to welcome back Clover Hope, critic and author of the book, The Motherload: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop. She's written for Pitchfork, Vibe, Vogue, The New York Times, and a billion other places. Clover, it's great to talk to you again.

• 1:02:04Speaker 07

  You too. I love the series, love to be on here, so thank you.

• 1:02:08Speaker 05

  Well, thank you so much. We love to have you. You wrote a Pitchfork Sunday review of Usher's Confessions album. And you talked a lot about the media narrative that they sort of built behind the record, that way we were encouraged to think of this as Usher's like real life confessions, when they obviously weren't. Like, is this album at its core somewhat of a PR stunt?

• 1:02:30Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it was a marketing stunt. But I think it's a little more nuanced than that. I like how Demeja Prey described it in interviews. He said the album was a way to basically make Usher interesting to people who didn't find him interesting at the time. So by that point, you know, I think everybody knew he was great at making hit songs. I think his previous album, 8701, is pretty underrated as kind of like a coming of age tale about a playboy. And then Confessions is that turning, him turning the corner, basically, kind of struggling to settle into adulthood and just kind of what it means to be in a real relationship. So I think he clearly took advantage-

• 1:03:16Speaker 07

  The narrative, the alley you basically that to me, Dupree set up, you know, uh, for his writing and production through Dupree's writing and production. Um, cause you know, he produced those anchor songs like Confessions Part Two, and that song was based on Dupree's personal experience.

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:03:33Speaker 07

  Usher said he didn't cheat or have a baby on the side. His ex-girlfriend at the time, Chili, said, you know, she confirmed that he didn't cheat. Like this was, like, that wasn't the reason for the breakup. This was Usher basically kind of just taking ownership of a certain narrative and throwing it out there, marketing it as, you know, just like, uh, his story and it became a huge sensation. So, you know.

• 1:03:59Speaker 05

  Do you agree with that idea that he wasn't interesting? Usher wasn't interesting prior to this? Like, he's on magazine covers. He's a huge star. Do you think he, do you think he needed this kind of personal narrative to get to the level he got to with this record?

• 1:04:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think he needed it to evolve past just kind of being that R and B bad boy, kind of. Like, he had this, this certain image of, you know, he really started out young in his, as his teen, as a teenager. And, you know, a lot of, um, R and B stars can kind of get pigeonholed into that. You know, lane of they're just making songs. They're just kind of making the songs for radio. And not necessarily albums, packages, personas, reinvention. And he needed to kind of basically like kind of up the bar for his, for himself. If he wanted to really kind of be in the conversation of, uh, Michael Jackson or Marvin Gaye.

• 1:04:56Speaker 07

  He couldn't just keep kind of making, you know, radio songs or, you know, and they were smashes, but, I mean, Confessions was a different level in terms of just storytelling. And, yeah, I do think, it's not that he wasn't interesting. He was, you know, in terms of, uh, the songs that he was making and like collaborations, videos, visuals, um, putting Tyrese in a, in a video.

• 1:05:21Speaker 07

  But I do. Think that, I mean, if you think about, well, what was his story back then, I don't think the average uh, listener could be like, well, this is his story. Like Usher is the, you know, in like a nutshell, like it wasn't easy to kind of sum him up, you know, in a way that maybe like Janet Jackson, like she kind of immediately as a solo kind of pop star came of like, I'm taking control of my narrative from my parents, out of my brother's shadow. She had kind of an immediate narrative and like he and he did need to be, you know, like just kind of like fluff it up a little bit, I guess.

• 1:05:57Speaker 05

  Sure. Uh, you connect the confessions narrative to like what Drake does now or Taylor Swift. Like Usher was obviously not the first pop star to construct like an album narrative at this level, like turn his life into content or whatever. But is this album, is confessions underrated now? You know, as part of the blueprint of how a pop star does this?

• 1:06:19Speaker 07

  Hmm. I think it's underrated and the pop space. I don't, I do think like for a lot of R and B artists, confessions is a blueprint. Obviously it wasn't anything kind of new at the time, but you know, the popular world is kind of full of artists who are just pouring their hearts out. Packaging their heartache, heartbreak, whatever into an album. Um, and like I said, Janet did that very well. Um, in terms of being a master of storytelling, reinvention, every album, new look, new story, you know? Um, and but I do think that Usher kind of um, did it for a different generation. And I also think he did it for differently for male artists, male R and B artists, you know, it's not, I don't think um,

• 1:07:05Speaker 07

  at the time, like that generation was maybe used to an artist of his caliber, just kind of allegedly being so truthful on a record, um, kind of being so like confessional, just, you know, or just kind of admitting, owning up to things, just being guilty, uh, taking accountability for some things. Um, so I think he kind of set a new type of blueprint, not the only, not the only one, but just kind of set up the next generation to the point that now we have artists who are, have been influenced by that album. Um, artists of any gender and um, you know, kind of take strains of it or just the idea of it even like just conceptually. Um, you know, like they've kind of, I, I think of like a jazz.

• 1:07:50Speaker 07

  Sullivan with hotels.

• 1:07:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah. Um, after Confessions, you mentioned, you know, Usher made Here I Stand, which was about his marriage. And then he made Raymond versus Raymond, which is basically about his divorce, you know? Did Usher eventually overdo this, you know, in making every new album some signpost in his private life? Like, did this get, did they get old after a while, this approach to album making?

• 1:08:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think, um, I think, well, it's hard because like with R and B artists especially, I know, because I was interviewing a lot of them at this and it's like kind of mid 2000s space. And what kept happening was that after the first album, um, and it's not just like relegated to R and B, but, uh, after their first album, artists would have to kind of figure out what story am I telling now? Or, you know, they were always talking about growth and it was like, but you just put out an album out like two years ago. So you don't have to grow.

• 1:08:50Speaker 05

  How much have you grown in two years realistically?

• 1:08:52Speaker 07

  Right. So it, yeah, it's like manufactured growth in some way. And I think he kind of fell into that trap of, okay, this test, I have to have something new to say in terms of like evolution, like I have to be moving forward in some way. And there are ways you can do that sonically. And I think he did it more narratively than, than, than sonically a lot of times. Like, you know, he experimented a little bit more, maybe like later on with like Looking for Myself, kind of getting into the dance EDM. But, um, I think the crafting became a little bit too much like salesmanship. Um, and he leaned into the, um, you know, he's a showman and I think he kind of leaned into that.

• 1:09:36Speaker 07

  And we saw a little bit too much of the machine or like the gears of like, okay, you're, you're trying to do something instead of just like, I'm just like singing and pouring my heart out, you know? Um, so like, you know, I think it's kind of, Confessions kind of transcended in a way, transcended like the narrative, the machine and, you know, the albums afterward just really, but it matched that. I mean, but that's not that unusual. I mean, it's just for an artist like, you know, what's, what topped thriller, you know? So, um, that it just, it like was what it was. Um, so I think the storytelling was there on Here I Stand, um, Raymond versus.

• 1:10:19Speaker 07

  Raymond, the tension was there, but I think that like all the pieces have to align for those type of uh projects to kind of keep working. And once you do it once, it's kind of, you know, the audience gets it. You can't really trick them like that.

• 1:10:34Speaker 05

  You write a lot about how Usher fits into the history of R and B, like what R and B meant in the early 2000s, like Justin Timberlake or something versus R and B by the end of the decades, like Drake is first blowing up. Like, do you see Usher as a classic R and B singer as like a or a forward looking like modern, like trying different stuff, R and B singer? Is he somehow, is he somehow both?

• 1:10:58Speaker 07

  Right. Um, classic R and B singer in the sense that me really succeed at merging classic sounds or just the tradition of R and B with whatever is contemporary at that time. So you could turn the radio on in the 1960s, like Motown era, and hi- his voice would have fit in back then. Um, the 80s, 90s, 2000s now. Like, so he's a traditional R and B singer. Like, he really has kind of the tone, the sentimental, mentality, sentimentality, the kind of um, just kind of that grit also that you can't really, um, you know, you can't really, like, you just have to have it.

• 1:11:41Speaker 07

  And yeah, yeah. But I wouldn't, I don't know if I would describe him as forward thinking in the way of maybe like, um, like TLC, you know, was with uh some, you know, me more so like the 3D, the uh, uh, fan album. Um, but he was good at moving R and B forward, um, like taking it to the next destination, kind of keeping it alive. And I think his trademark was more so making R and B pop instead of like trying to make pop R and B, which, you know, it like even with the, um, you know, the albums at post confessions, those, he's always made R and B.

• 1:12:24Speaker 07

  Like, he's always had R and B as the kind of core of his music, even with O M G, all of that. You know, I, maybe in that way, yes, he's kind of, um, you know, forward looking. Uh, but less like, I guess I don't like not necessarily future thinking, but more so like just very adaptive kind of blending or like making sure soul and everything.

• 1:12:48Speaker 05

  All right. R and B plus is great. No, I totally like it. I like R and B plus a lot. I mean, thinking about the confessions album, like from what I've read, like Usher loved burn. The song burn, which is more of like a classic epic weeping R and B ballad. Like you get the sense he loved burn as a song more than he loved. Yeah. You know, even though yeah is the huge hit, like, do you get the sense that Usher would be happy? Just being, you know, more of a pure, straight ahead R and B singer and like he does, he mixes rap in or he mixes EDM in like just because that's what's popular now. And that's what he has to do to an extent.

• 1:13:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. Um, I do. I mean, I think that, I mean, first of all, I always loved burn a little bit more than the so I might be also more on the, so like Usher kind of like side of things with that. Um, but I think like his thing is, uh, so I interviewed him like, and I think it was 2007, around the time of OMG and the thing he said was something about like, um, I think I asked him like, are you more, um, pop than soul now? And he said, yeah, he said something like he's all of that. He's like all of that. And he tries, his thing is really to put soul in everything.

• 1:14:07Speaker 07

  So I think, and I tend to agree with that. Um, so, you know, like he's the weeping R and B. I think he always goes back to that because that's the core of like who he is, is that kind of, um, you know, he could just go on stage and sing and he just, he doesn't have to dance. He could just kind of sing and the vocals are on display and like, that's his thing. Um, but I do think that someone with his kind of level of swagger can't really be just pure R and B. Like he brings, he always has that kind of, um, wild side or that edge, that kind of, um, like rapper's kind of sensibility and does the actual like talk rap style

• 1:14:52Speaker 07

  that I, I do think he doesn't get credited as much for bringing that kind of double time flow into R and B. Um, like, you know, it's kind of like the fast kind of, um, Uh, fast singing, basically. Um, I think if you ask him like to sing a song on the spot, it's going to be like a burn or like kind of not, yeah. So, uh, but I think he's, I just don't, I, I, I definitely see him as kind of like that person, that artist who helped R and B kind of turn this, um, corner into a little bit more into rap, rap singing, uh, where you get people like a Trey Songz and Chris Brown and they're able to do that hard and B sound that

• 1:15:35Speaker 07

  I think became, you know, like more popular. And I do think like confession was a big, uh, played a big role in that. Like he is the R and B playboy, you know, and that I don't think, um, you know, and it may be, you know, that's the same could be said of like a Marvin Gaye, like he had that edge also. Um, but Marvin Gaye wasn't rapping like that. So, you know, it's, um, yeah, I, I think it's a little bit in the middle, basically. Like if, if I can be allowed to have that.

• 1:16:08Speaker 05

  Absolutely. As you say, I agree that like Usher doesn't need to dance. He doesn't need to move to perform, but I just watching him at the Super Bowl, like roller skating. It's like he's just, he moves so beautifully. He's such a, a fantastic dancer, you know, and it's like he's, he's in the mold. He's not better than, but he's in the mold of a Michael Jackson, like a classic entertainer. Like, does that make Usher more of a rarity now? You know, that he's as good a dancer, you know, as good a performer as he is a pure singer?

• 1:16:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think we saw that with the Vegas show and that's what came out. Like he definitely seems like the last of his kind. I, I was able to, my first ever concert was Usher eighty seven, um, yeah, in Jersey. And I saw him at, um, at the recent Barclays, uh, show. Like I've kind of interviewed him probably three or four times. So really been there for the kind of evolution and even in all those years is there aren't that many artists who are on that caliber or like even close to it. You have to have been dancing all of your life to be a great dancer.

• 1:17:19Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:17:19Speaker 07

  And you really need to love to dance. Um, so that is a rarity. Um, and there's something that his Vegas show did to kind of preserve that in time or just, you know, and the, the Super Bowl halftime show. Um, in a way I do think that it might become a little bit less of a rarity, um, in the sense that artists now coming up will be influenced by this version of Usher. Um, like if, let's say he hadn't done the Vegas show or he hadn't the Vegas, um, residency and didn't have this sort of comeback. Um, like I might've said something differently, but because we, we saw this kind of like resurgence, I feel like it's giving

• 1:18:00Speaker 07

  the, uh, newer generation, um, a template that they might not have researched before or looked back on. Now they can kind of see it, uh, live. And, um, so I think that is an interesting thing to look at in terms of, you know, I, I really thought that like singing, dancing, just being a performer would be if that it was kind of be becoming extinct, you know, um, but we have Victoria Monet and she has all those elements and edges.

• 1:18:29Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:18:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, no, but just her tour, you know, she really.

• 1:18:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, visual, like performing as an R and B artist and not just kind of singing. So, you know, I, I do think like that, that, um, that's true, but the Vegas show basically was him telling another story to me, which was just, I am the greatest artist of my generation. And that's, you know, and that is rare. Like there's nobody, I think we can definitively say there's not another artist like Usher. People can try to argue, but I don't think, um, you know, I don't think that's, I don't think there's another artist who has made something like confessions. So.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  Just to wrap up, okay, so you've interviewed him three or four times. You've interviewed so many people, huge stars, like just what is he like as an interview? Is he more forthcoming, you know, in keeping with the confessions theme? Like, what is he just like to be in a room with and to try and extract information from?

• 1:19:32Speaker 07

  He's this is where his kind of, you know, the media sensibility comes into play. He's very good at toeing the line, I think.

• 1:19:40Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:19:41Speaker 07

  He'll give you a little, like, he'll give you enough that makes you feel like he's being forthcoming and just kind of is very ready to answer a question or just kind of, you can tell it's coming from, you know, an honest place. But I think he's so good with it that and craft, he's just like crafty.

• 1:20:01Speaker 05

  He's a pro.

• 1:20:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, like it's the way that he says it will be like, okay, this is the best way to, this is the best way to present, right? He's gonna give that answer because he's just been trained to do that. But I do think there is like honesty in, in his approach. Like, I didn't feel like he was lying to me in the interviews, but I do think he's convenient, like he's a convenient truth teller in a way. So like he will kind of give you just enough, basically. And I think, I do think that's the mark of a really great artist is you always want a little bit more or like there is at least some mystery and it's kind of like, are we getting the real Usher? Well, we're getting some of him and maybe that's like, that's

• 1:20:44Speaker 07

  kind of satisfying. And, you know, I think that's what confessions look also.

• 1:20:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's a performer in that sense, too.

• 1:20:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:20:53Speaker 05

  Not, not too much, you know, we don't know too much about Usher. We know plenty, but we don't know too much.

• 1:21:01Speaker 07

  Exactly. It's so interesting. He is interesting.

• 1:21:04Speaker 05

  He is. There you go. They finally, they did it. They actually made him interesting. Clover, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for talking.

• 1:21:13Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 1:21:18Speaker 05

  Thanks very much to our guest this week, Clover Hope. Thanks to our producer filling in this week, Bobby Wagner. Thanks to our other producers, Justin Sayles and Jonathan Kerma. Thank you to Olivia Creary for additional production help. Thanks to Juliana Ress for fact checking, and thank you very much for listening. And now let's all go listen to "Yeah" by Usher. We'll see you next week.

• 1:21:46Speaker 05

  That is a truly phenomenal pop song moment when Luda's verse collides perfectly with "Yeah", the glorious dismount of "But a freak in the bed", it's a, oh, God.

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