How Usher Finally Found Himself On His New Album, 'Looking 4 Myself'
By Gadiola Emanuel - 5:30:00 AM
Oh hey readers! I'm Sam Lansky, and this is "Pop Think," where I spend a lot of time on a quest for self-actualization through pop music -- I might even be inclined to say that I'm Looking 4 Myself. (Sorry to get so profound, but that's how we roll here at Buzzworthy.) See, Looking 4 Myself is the title of the new Usher
album, and it's a superb new entry in the singer's three decades (!) of
making some of the most creative baby-making music in the game, fused
with a confessional spirit that sets him apart from his R&B
contemporaries.
And on Looking 4 Myself, Usher is on an identity quest
of sorts, traversing the lands of giddy-up dance-pop, grimy R&B
downtempos, and even some ultra-fresh New Wave -- which sees him at his
most diverse and inventive yet. Everybody scream: We're headed for a
major pop climax.
Usher sounds like he's coming of age on his seventh album in three decades.
"How can someone hurt you, but still make you feel so good?" asks Usher on "Lessons For The Lover," a slow-burning Rico Love-produced jam on his latest LP, Looking 4 Myself.
This sentiment could almost serve as the thesis statement not just for
the album but for Usher's lyrics over the course of his career: He's
always sung about physical pleasure and emotional pain, and at his best,
the tension between the two. If this idea is all over the record, it's
at its clearest on the debut single, "Climax," an ingenious Diplo-produced
fuzzy confection about sex and commitment, and the tenuous relationship
between the two. It's loaded with entendre but masterfully controlled, a
spectacular anticlimax.
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