Sadly, the remaining tracks about sex, troubled relationships and, er, more sex, are so lacking in variety that the album can't help feeling one-dimensional and bland.įortunately, Raymond Vs. The album's 15-strong production task, which includes hitmakers Jam & Lewis (Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson), Danja (Britney Spears, Madonna) and Sean Garrett (Beyoncé, Chris Brown), keep things moving at a strictly bump n' grind pace throughout, briefly chaning gear for recent chart-topper 'OMG', a will.i.am-helmed club banger which sticks out like a diamond in the rough. "Tonight we gonna do a lot of sexin'", the 31-year-old father-of-two promises on 'Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home)', while 'So Many Girls' finds him professing to be a hit with the ladies on an international scale: "Asian, Caucasian, Bajan, Jamaican - I got a million." On tracks like these – especially 'Guilty', on which he admits to "leaving and having a little fun" - it's hard to sympathise with the man who seemingly couldn't sign "them papers" fast enough. US buzz single and album track 'Papers' addresses the sore topic most explicitly, with Usher proclaiming: "I'm ready to sign them papers." In fact, the singer lays out the reasons for the end of his marriage - "I know it's you I love / But then I also know it's you I don't like" - almost as if it were a piece of raw meat, filleted and splayed across the butcher's block and left for the gossip rags to pick clean.įor much of the record, Usher seems keen to retract Stand's pro-monogamy message and trade it back for the sex-frenzied midtempo R&B of yore. Raymond finds Usher, somewhat inevitably, drawing on the breakdown of his marriage.
However, less than two years later, the singer has dramatically shifted the subject matter for his latest offering, the rather ominously-titled Raymond vs. “Mars vs Venus,” a very slow jam, soars, while “Pro Lover” is a breezy, casual number filled with sweet dub accents.The last Usher album, 2008's Here I Stand, heralded the R&B star's growth from a libido-raging twenty-something to A Grown Man indulging in what he termed "the true makings of love" with then-wife Tameka Foster. Two of the best happen to be collaborations with Jam and Lewis and the Avila Brothers. (The combination is as wrong as Eugene McDaniels' “Compared to What” and a soft drink commercial.) Otherwise, the slow jams and the few moments when Usher sounds as if he's having actual fun win out. (Either way, it’s evident that long-term relationships might not be for him.) The sleek dancefloor track “So Many Girls,” one of a few songs in which Usher sounds dead in the eyes, going through the motions, desensitized by the bounty of women at his feet, is followed by the sarcastically titled “Guilty,” where he whines “I guess I’m guilty for wanting to be up in the club” - which warrants a response like “Yes, attached 31-year-old man, that’s correct.” A few songs before that is a quasi-redemptive ballad “Foolin’ Around” he humbles himself, seems to take responsibility for his actions, then casually drops “Guess that’s just the man in me, blame it on celebrity.” The album’s catchiest uptempo song, “Lil Freak,” featuring Nicki Minaj, is effective despite itself, swiping the synthesizer line from “Living for the City” - a classic containing Stevie Wonder's most angered social commentary - for the sake of Usher’s lesbian tryst.
Many of the songs on the album have to be taken on their own, stripped of context otherwise, determining what applies to Usher’s real and fantasy lives can be problematic. He pours himself into that song more than any other on the set, and breakup lyrics don’t get much more specific than “You don’t think I know what’s up, but sweetheart that’s what ruined us” or “I done damn near lost my mama.” The song was awarded the top spot on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, most likely for its lyrical uniqueness since the song does not break out of an exceptionally repetitive twiddle. “Papers,” the early buzz single for Raymond V Raymond, bears the closest relation to the turbulence he experienced. The making of Usher’s sixth studio album was inevitably affected by the end of his marriage and its aftershocks.
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