I can’t be sure of this, but I feel fairly confident that Usher Raymond IV has never consumed a drop of milk. How else could you attribute the archival-grade preservation of his vocal cords, his leggero tenor as athletic and diamond-sharp as the day he dropped his self-titled debut in 1994—which, if you recall, was a whole 30 years ago? On Coming Home, his ninth album, his low warbles and falsetto are soft and airy, his natural register as creamy as the dairy he’s certainly never consumed. You can picture him pairing his kettlebell runs right alongside his vocal exercises, as pristine and optimized as any Southern former choirboy determined to stay at the top of his game.
What went down at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show was everything that has made Usher into a pop icon: an old-school Hollywood entertainer whose choreography is always step-perfect and whose position as a multi-generational sex symbol is both good-natured and tasteful. Hordes of women, famous and otherwise, flocked to his Vegas residency for the Usher Seduction Experience, which included individual serenades that were so convincing they may have very publicly exploded at least one relationship (and produced a soundtrack for the meta-drama).
On Coming Home’s 20 songs, he remains most comfortable and effective playing the sensual lover with come-hither abs, where even the most blatant sexual metaphor doesn’t come off as seamy. “Wanna cuddle in bed/Won’t just open your legs and then leave you for dead,” he sings on the sunny title track, which is also an extended allegory for an orgasm. On the album cover, he holds a Georgia peach in front of his shiny deltoids just so, projecting hometown pride and provoking deep lust. On “Stone Kold Freak,” his request for enthusiastic consent should come with a fainting couch: “Right after you make your decision,” he warbles confidently, “I’m gon’ make my incision, girrrl.” A business journalist should investigate whether he has stock in folding fans.
As much as Usher plays up his lifelong amiable-ravisher persona on Coming Home, he maintains the versatility he’s established through the years, whether on enduring crunk hits like “Yeah!” or dance-music experiments like “Numb” and “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love.” Here his musical curiosity extends to amapiano, with Nigerian superproducer Pheelz joining him on the plush love song “Ruin” and a Burna Boy feature on “Coming Home,” while the delectable Tricky Stewart-produced electro jam “Keep On Dancin’” slide-glides its way around French house. The album sequencing divides these impulses into digestible and tonally paired sections—the bass-funk and backbeat of “I Love U” precede the baby-making midtempo jam “Please U,” both of which evoke Prince at his 1982 peak of shirtlessness, and pay homage with a wink, like Usher’s casually exhibiting his adaptability to the greats. “Big,” a horny song about a fat ass and, probably, his Magnum-wrapped anaconda, couches a salacious grin in a horn section and synth bassline reminiscent of Quincy Jones productions; “Luckiest Man” is an ‘80s throwback love song with a pristine synth cowbell that will leave you wistful and nostalgic for Al B. Sure!
On the handful of collaborations with The-Dream—the standout drippy flex “Margiela"; the crying-in-the-strip-club subwoofer anthem “Cold Blooded,” produced by Pharrell—Usher draws on sounds and sentiments invented and popularized in ’90s and ’00s Atlanta. It marks a return to the music that raised him as an artist while firmly reiterating his place in its legacy. It’s his comfort zone, but a performer with his emotional mettle doesn’t become complacent or entitled; even cheese is on the table. “A-Town Girl,” a snap-music track featuring a costly Billy Joel sample and a hyper-local Latto verse, interpolates Joel’s “Uptown Girl” for a love letter to the A. Is it corny? Yes, but I’m not from Atlanta, and within Usher’s orbit, this feel-good devotional to “Magic City lemon pepper wings” and a woman who “keep a blicky on her just in case somebody try” works markedly better than a Georgia tourism board ad.
Yet 2004's Confessions remains the standard-bearer, both in Usher's catalog and among pop R&B men proposing their own versatility. Part of that was its attendant narrative—that each successive single seemed to build up to a plot worthy of a telenovela (and it didn't hurt that Usher experienced his own breakup during the height of Confessions' popularity, with longtime girlfriend Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas). That level of cohesion is missing here, as Coming Home is more of a document of his own musical ambidexterity—a reflection on the first three decades of his career and a love letter to various R&B styles across decades—than the kind of all-encompassing album that can practically eclipse everything around it. Coming Home is full of delectable singles that prove Usher is still the king of pop-R&B—he’s simply reminding his fans what he can do, how many ways he can do it, and how nastily, too, if you’ll allow him.
Appropriately, then, the most classic-sounding Usher arrives with “I Am the Party” and “On the Side,” collaborations with longtime producer and career-maker Jermaine Dupri, the king of Atlanta and alleged source material for much of Confessions. The latter, built on a simple synth line played by co-writer Bryan-Michael Cox, is a heart-wrenching midtempo ballad about falling in love with his side-piece: “I mean, I love my baby, but she way thicker,” he coos, rude but endearing. And therein lies the secret sauce: Usher’s voice, full of solemnity, can even invoke sympathy while he’s being a dog. Performing better than all of his male peers may have gotten him to the top, but only this sort of emotional fortitude builds a legacy. As he puts it himself: “It’s all here baby… I am the party.”
