Usher steps back onto the music scene with his brand new album, Confessions. On the album, Usher attempts to lay his heart bare before the world, as he discusses the perils of being a young music star.
He explains to us what it feels like to love, to lust, to succumb to weakness and to try to make it all better again. His squeaky clean image is gone and in its place he’s left a piece of reality.
The track “Confessions Part II” is Usher’s confession to his current girlfriend. During the intro, Usher discovers that he is having a child by another woman and he struggles to find a way to explain this to his girlfriend. As a portrait of Usher’s weakest moment, it fails to convey the desperateness and anxiousness that accompany a confession of this scale.
The simplicity of the beat gives the song the raw and unfiltered feeling of true emotion, but the lyrics are not provoking. The lines are repetitive, almost to the point of being unbearable. This song just doesn’t cut it, and at first it seems as if he has a long way to go until he reaches the level of real R&B.
Though “Confessions” isn’t a musical masterpiece, some of Usher’s other songs are promising. “Do It To Me” sounds like an ode to Prince – an 80s throwback with a seductive beat and enticing lyrics. The song’s flow is orgasmic; the sound is slow and dragging at first and then, as it continues, the pace quickens to climax, and then the process is repeated over and over again.
As an R&B crooner with pop appeal, Usher has not quite ascended to the level of R. Kelly, but he definitely has contemporaries like Mario and Avant beat.
Though all of the beats on Confessions are noteworthy, the same cannot be said about the lyrics. The pitfall of this album is the lyrics; Usher ruins great songs by adding horrible, cheesy spoken sections seemingly at random.
Overall, for a “TRL” star, he’s not half bad.
Be the first to comment