Um, dude, you got married and had two kids. ‘She Don’t Know’ featuring Ludacris uses a brass band, oohing and screaming in the background, and a ‘Yeah!’ for a chorus, while ‘Pro Lover’ jumps on the male misogynist bandwagon, claiming ‘I’m not a player, I’m a pro’ and warning women against falling in love with him because he won’t settle down. The song samples Stevie Wonder’s ‘Living for the City’ so poorly that Wonder should sue for massacring such a masterpiece. ‘Lil Freak’ featuring Nicki Minaj makes Usher sound more like Chris Brown, which is, if you read the news, not a compliment. ‘There Goes My Baby’ starts off promisingly, before he starts whining about how he likes the way she pokes it out, once again entering sleazy territory. If anything, the song is sleazy in that creepy-uncle-way, not a good image for this former stud. It’s a tough one we don’t know if Usher is more offensive than sad, or just both. The fact that he has to stoop to Paris-Hilton-vocabulary-levels makes the former cool kid very un-cool.įurther proof of his lack of coolness is ‘Hey Daddy’, a song that urges all women out there to call him Daddy while poking out their backsides. It’s disappointing proof that Usher is playing it safe, with his voice barely leaving the same monotone range throughout the song. Raymond has no hit the size of ‘Yeah’, instead there’s ‘OMG’ featuring Will.I.Am, a massive hit this summer. Now facing some fierce competition from a younger R&B generation including Ne-Yo, Trey Songz and Drake, Usher needs to do more than flash his toned abs every five seconds. How he has failed to evolve over the past six years is baffling, especially since he was allegedly at the top of his game. This is exactly the same formula that he used on Confessions, with the same themes of breakups, getting caught cheating, and hitting up the clubs.
Not only is the album confusing, it’s also tired. One minute Usher is lamenting the sorrows of break-ups, the next minute he’s boasting about how all the ladies want a piece of him. Raymond seems to suffer from a split personality. Written and produced over two years with some of the hottest names in the R&B business (Producers RedOne and Jermaine Dupri, rappers T.I., Ludacris and Nicki Minaj), Raymond Vs. Unfortunately, time has not been good to Usher since then, as his career has taken a step back while his personal life (and messy divorce) has played out through tabloids and gossip sites.
Seriously?īack in 2004, Usher was the number one R&B artist with a number one album, Confessions, a massive hit single ‘Yeah’ and dance moves so smooth and funky he made Justin Timberlake look like a whiny white boy with no rhythm. Some join a gym, others drink themselves sick, while Usher decided to write an album about girls calling him Daddy and letting him slap their backsides.
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