RELEASE DATE:
January 1, 2010
As someone born in 2003, I was not fortunate enough to get to experience the transition between 90s and 2000s R&B (AKA, the main genre and time period of music I currently listen to. My parents are Ethiopian immigrants whose music phase died in their adolescence, which maxed out by the time Michael Jackson released his last round of songs in the 90s. I feel like this had a big impact on the music I consumed just as most other kids I knew. Unless you were a child that had somehow reached the identity-formation stage well before puberty and had established your auditory palette in elementary school. Sorry guys, I wasn’t that cultured 🙁 so since the people I was around 24/7 didn’t expose me to American artists, I wasn’t able to grow up with most of the ones I deeply cherish today. However, as I have grown to witness and participate in the rise and fall of the many sound eras of the new millennium, I feel that I am now able to objectively describe the incredibleness of each one, in hindsight.
Maybe not objectively, though, since I have the strongest memories of my childhood in this time, I feel that the maximalist, EDM-infused classic-pop sound that suffocated the average American ear from 2010 to 2014 does not get the credit she deserves. What other sound era do we have where every radio hit made you imagine (or, if you were old enough, actively doing so) jumping and screaming around in the club, fueled solely off of the high of the song’s energy? At the ripe age of 7-8 years old, I already knew back then that it was gonna take a LOT to make music as fun as this!….I guess saying this then has a connotation of proudly defending that music, but now it’s kind of embarrassing that this truth still stands (at least for mainstream pop- artists: STEP IT UP!).
I have this habit of sticking to one artist for a really long period of time, carefully going through their entire discography when I find the few days of the month where I have the attention span to listen to a new album instead of shuffling the same 10 songs I like on repeat. Almost all of 2023 has been Usher’s year. More on that later! Now, as a frequent visitor of “Raymond v. Raymond”, I can absolutely say this is my favorite album of his. Mind you, this album has 22 songs, so the fact that 5 of them had been on-repeat radio hits when it first dropped is INSANE!!!!! Almost all of the Usher songs I knew and were from this album.
When my friends and I first heard “Lil’ Freak” and “Hot Tottie”, you could not tell us ANYTHING. Audiences would pay to see the way we acted for the next two weeks. Once you hear a Polow Da Don beat, you will never be the same again I think. These two tracks helped catapult Usher from having maybe 20 streams into being my #3 artist of all time. Which says a lot, because my top 2 artists (Beyonce and NCT 127) have well over 2k streams each. Anyway, LOVE the daunting sound, what a rush when it feels like you’re ascending into hell. I love when you hear songs and just know that they would have the most insane choreo ever. So many intentionally placed song breaks and melody switch-ups and extensive runs, and along with the complex instrumental, these two feel very cinematic. Will be listening endlessly!
Re-listening also made me realize how much I loved debut Bieber (re: “Somebody to Love” Usher ver.)! You cannot tell me that some of the songs in My World 2.0 were not originally written/made for Ush. The sound is too similar! And “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love” was already in my top songs of all time in 2010, and I’m happy to report that that statement remains to be true. Usher was being so Lover of Fun in this era and I wanted to be just like him!
“OMG” used to make me laugh when I was a kid because I couldn’t take will.i.am seriously after the Rio movie. And because of this, I’m even more taken aback by how complex the song structure is! Even now, very rarely do we encounter deviations from the classic “intro-verse-prechorus-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-final chorus” structure, and for them to do this and have the song be so popular is so cool to me. The way they bring the track of people cheering in and out and constantly tease you with the prechorus, then have the chorus be a simple anti-drop that kind of blends back into the next verse… what a rollercoaster! And the staccatos!!!!!! This song is so good for ppl who can’t pay attention!!
Anyway, I think Usher really found his footing in this time period of music. Of course, with a voice as rich and malleable as his, R&B is an easy win. His first albums were predestined for success as soon as he found out he could sing! But as much as I love Confessions and 8701, I think it says so much more when such a detailed abundance of instrumentals and genre-blending is somehow able to spotlight and uplift your voice instead of overshadowing it. In other words, when you think of Usher, as a longtime-stan, casual listener, or really any American, do you really only think of his early music? Or are you hearing songs that make you want to go to a rave!