![]() I heard Usher interviewed on National Public Radio and was impressed by his eloquence and honesty, making me more inclined to listen to the song collection. ![]() Commercial radio stations have embraced the songs, as have Usher’s loyal admirers. The critical notice in the once bohemian and vital but now merely exhausted Village Voice, no longer a significant barometer of cultural value yet a sentimental favorite, gave its approval too: amid the empty desks in the paper’s office, its music critic Maura Johnston, so much better in print than when interviewed on the radio, found the energy and perspective to state, “ Looking 4 Myself is a bit of a hodgepodge, a ‘something for everyone’ album where the results are mostly enjoyable” (June 13, 2012). And one has to be fearless for this ride” (June 8, 2012), listing some of Usher’s collaborators-among them, Diplo, Pharrell Williams, and Swedish House Mafia. Billboard magazine’s Erika Ramirez stated, “ Looking 4 Myself finds Usher taking his core R&B fans on a ride towards global domination. Usher, having made good music with which to do that, need not apologize. It is an amusing but true reminder that ambition never sleeps: popular artists test themselves and renew themselves as well as deepen their fame and wallets by meeting new audiences. It is true that Usher conceived of his new sound-he calls it ‘Revolutionary Pop,’ because people like Usher have long since given up being humble-after trips to Ibiza and Coachella, a festival he’d never attended before 2011…But he also noticed an audience he hadn’t yet seduced” (June 5, 2012). Spin magazine, with Rolling Stone one of the survivors among the popular print music magazines of the developing internet age, if not a dinosaur, offered some background for Usher’s Looking 4 Myself: in an approving commentary that acknowledged Usher’s drive, genuine depth, and the periodic hilarity of his erotic enthusiasm, writer Zach Baron declared, “In pop, the avant-garde is never where you think it is. For months before Looking 4 Myself was available, Usher spoke about his hopes for it. Usher Raymond has been recognized by the general public and by his peers and he has received numerous awards, including from the Grammy academy, Billboard, Soul Train, and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. I remember years ago hearing about Usher, but not being sure what he looked or sounded like, my attention having been given to jazz, rock, and world music-and then seeing a film involving gangsters in which Usher was featured (I think that was In the Mix in 2005), and liking it enough to wonder about what I had missed: after the 15 years-old Usher Terry Raymond IV’s self-titled debut album ( Usher) in 1994, the Tennessee-born singer released My Way in 1997 and then Usher Live (1999), 8701 (2001), and Confessions (2004), with Confessions selling more than twenty-million copies around the world, preceding Here I Stand (2008) and Raymond v. ![]() Yet, one can feel foolish for not knowing better someone who has been famous to many for years and years. It is easy to lose track of popular music, as new products perpetually are being introduced to the market. I like it, and am glad that it keeps alive the promise of popular music, particularly African-American rhythm-and-blues. Usher’s album Looking 4 Myself is ambitious, creative, intelligent, vulgar-an album for the culture as it exists now. Yet, in a masterful composition about separation from a lover and loneliness, “Climax,” Usher uses a beautiful falsetto voice that defies the clichés of masculinity and ugliness dominant in much contemporary music. The next song “Scream,” confident, fast, and forceful, a bodice-ripper, if not a barn-burner, is about the level of sexual satisfaction Usher can bring to a woman: “relax and get on your back if you wanna scream.” It has a rampaging rhythm that is both artificial and dominating. Intense, with short phrases more spoken than sung, featuring shimmering sheets of sound, Usher Terry Raymond IV begins his album Looking 4 Myself with the song “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.” (One of its lines is “I don’t wanna do all the normal things.”) Usher Raymond’s singing is assured, exuberant, flirtatious, and rhythmic within spinning, throbbing music-and describes an atmosphere in which desire, partying, status, and insult are all part of the mix.
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