The 5 essential songs from Usher’s ‘Hard II Love’
For Usher Raymond, fall 2016 is a season of experiments.
Less than a month after appearing in the boxing drama
Hands of Stone in his most substantive on-screen role yet, the R&B legend tries on a few more personas on his eighth studio album Hard II Love ( out of four), out Friday.
The album title nods to Usher’s confessional streak that runs through the album — he’s either trying to seduce a romantic partner or apologizing to them, sometimes both at once. While his subject matter is classic Usher territory, the singer seems aware that the R&B landscape is much different today than when his first Confessions came out in 2004.
As other stars weave their R&B vocals in between rap verses (Drake) or refashion them as Michael Jackson-era pop (The Weeknd), Usher is determined not to be an anachronism, filling the first half of Hard II Love with more modern experiments: losing the vibrato, changing up his flow and, instead of inviting a guest to rap a verse, doing it himself.
Decades into a career of making accessible, radiofriendly R&B, Usher, 37, shrewdly knows he needs to keep moving forward.
If you’re turning on Hard II Love for the first time, don’t miss these five essential tracks. NO LIMIT Released as one of Hard II Love’s first singles (alongside the more classic Usher ballad Crash), No
Limit hinted that Usher had been taking notes on radio trends when prepping his album, from his drawled verses to the guest feature from the center of hip-hop’s zeitgeist, Atlanta rapper Young Thug. Though the chorus’ suggestion that Usher’s family-friendly image is in any way “ghetto” is slightly laughable, the rest of the song isn’t, as he pulls off an update to his sound with a toned-down beat and just enough bravado. MAKE U A BELIEVER This is what peak-2016 Usher sounds like. Make U A Believer belongs in a time capsule of this year’s music trends, with beats from producer of the moment, ad-libbed shouts in the background, brags that run the gamut of bad hip-hop behavior and cadences borrowed straight from Future. His spoken-rapped verses may not make you a believer (get it?) in his new direction, but it’s the album’s most daring attempt to sound like everyone else on rap radio, so give it a listen. FWM Two-thirds through Hard II Love comes the album’s prerequisite tropical house song — and the realization that maybe Usher’s been taking cues from the wrong musical inspirations. Usher served as Justin Bieber’s mentor early in the young star’s career, and here, the teacher becomes the student on a song that’d fit right in with the light-footed electronic production (and themes of crushing regret) of Bieber’s 2015 album Purpose. HARD II LOVE An album full of songs like Hard
II Love would’ve been a snooze. But nestled near the album’s end, the title track is a welcome quiet moment, a pop ballad stripped down to just a guitar line and vocals that radiate warmth. Yes, it sounds vaguely Coldplay-esque, a song that could be tackled by anyone on the radio today from Demi Lovato to Charlie Puth. But after the many moments on Hard II
Love where Usher deliberately, defiantly doesn’t sound like himself, the album’s title track is a reminder that Usher doing Usher isn’t a bad thing. STRONGER What, Usher was going to release a rap/R&B album in 2016 and not include a nod to dancehall? Thankfully, he restricts his references to a vaguely Caribbean beat, adding a gospel choir and, after an album that splits its time between the bedroom and the confessional booth, a welcome message of redemption.