The album`s salvation arrives in the sort of the club hit Lil Freak.
Usher`s devotional murmurings sound empty and stilted and the pace is so dense that the song practically hibernates its way out of the speakers. Likewise Hey Daddy (Daddy`s Home) manages to obviate the downright slushiness of his similarly paced love songs.īut so the cloying ballad There Goes My Baby arrives and the singer uses up nearly all of the goodwill gained from the album`s opening tracks. The opener Monstar borrows from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to make something soulful and remarkably catchy. It`s no surprise, then, that the 31-year-old performer has returned to plumbing the depths of failed relationships in the desire of recapturing some of that success.īut despite the somewhat cynical approach, the bizarre focus on legal documentation (more on that later) and a propensity to mix self-pity with vulgarity in an effort to appear boyish and alluring, Raymond v Raymond is really rather listenable. The LP didn`t just cement the singer`s reputation as R&B`s number-one heartbreak kid – it sold 20 million albums worldwide.īy contrast, the final time we heard from usher (2008`s Here I Stand) he was in uncharacteristically high spirits, but the album shifted a meager 1.5 million copies. If you`re getting a notion of deja vu, that`s because back in 2004 he released Confessions – also a break-up album, that sentence from TLC`s Chilli. It sees the R&B lothario (real name usher Raymond IV) pondering his break from wife Tameka Foster and few stones are left unturned: it`s a narration of love, loss and legal issues.
#USHER RAYMOND VS RAYMOND MOVIE#
With a title inspired by the 1970s divorce movie Kramer vs Kramer, Usher`s sixth album is perhaps unsurprisingly a break-up record.