Perhaps contributing to this is the album`s duration, at just shy of 59 minutes, it is too long to avoid sounding repetitive.
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all show up, but their cameos feel tacked on, rather than office of the fabric. Ludacris, the Black Eyed Peas` Will.I.Am and T.I. The album`s other guest spots are less than astonishing, however. With whirling strings, Missy Elliott-style beats and throbbing bass it offers Raymond v Raymond`s highest point.īut despite its big chorus and powerful vocal performance from Usher, the female rapper Nicki Minaj steals the present with a verse reminiscent of vintage Lil` Kim. The album`s salvation arrives in the sort of the club hit Lil Freak. Usher`s devotional murmurings sound empty and stilted and the pace is so dense that the song practically hibernates its way out of the speakers. Likewise Hey Daddy (Daddy`s Home) manages to obviate the downright slushiness of his similarly paced love songs.īut so the cloying ballad There Goes My Baby arrives and the singer uses up nearly all of the goodwill gained from the album`s opening tracks. The opener Monstar borrows from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to make something soulful and remarkably catchy. It`s no surprise, then, that the 31-year-old performer has returned to plumbing the depths of failed relationships in the desire of recapturing some of that success.īut despite the somewhat cynical approach, the bizarre focus on legal documentation (more on that later) and a propensity to mix self-pity with vulgarity in an effort to appear boyish and alluring, Raymond v Raymond is really rather listenable. The LP didn`t just cement the singer`s reputation as R&B`s number-one heartbreak kid – it sold 20 million albums worldwide.īy contrast, the final time we heard from usher (2008`s Here I Stand) he was in uncharacteristically high spirits, but the album shifted a meager 1.5 million copies. If you`re getting a notion of deja vu, that`s because back in 2004 he released Confessions – also a break-up album, that sentence from TLC`s Chilli.
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It sees the R&B lothario (real name usher Raymond IV) pondering his break from wife Tameka Foster and few stones are left unturned: it`s a narration of love, loss and legal issues.
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“Mars vs Venus,” a very slow jam, soars, while “Pro Lover” is a breezy, casual number filled with sweet dub accents.With a title inspired by the 1970s divorce movie Kramer vs Kramer, Usher`s sixth album is perhaps unsurprisingly a break-up record. 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.
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(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.
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The making of Usher’s sixth studio album was inevitably affected by the end of his marriage and its aftershocks.