Without recourse to Autotune, the tone and flow of his voice is spinetingling as Usher glides and curls around synth bass and digital beats. Technically, his singing is up there with the best in a genre renowned for superpowered vocals. Usher really came into his own in the post New Jack Swing oeuvre, where RnB met hip hop to create a new standard of sleek, modern, electronic based pop blending rap with soul. It might even be the best of his career, if you can overlook the fact that at 20 tracks long it’s a bit bloated (not something you would say about the super ripped star himself). Usher’s exuberant ninth album, Coming Home, suggests the 45-year-old is determined to give it his best shot. His reputation as a hard-working entertainer with genuine performing skills has nonetheless endured for the Super Bowl organisers, and it will be a very big deal for RnB if its former golden boy can parlay his half-time show into a title comeback. But it has been 12 years since Usher registered a top 20 hit single, eight years since his Hard II Love album stalled at number five in the States, and six years since a collaborative album, A, failed to even break the US top 30. With his incredible voice and slick moves, he was once seen as potential heir to his hero Michael Jackson. But – with the right play – this could be a moment to reckon with.Ī big star of the late 1990s and noughties, the former teenage prodigy’s hitmaking career has been in decline for over a decade. Like American Football itself, US singer Usher Raymond IV is a much bigger deal on his home turf than he is around the rest of the world. You don’t need to be the world’s smartest marketing person to know that a weekend when you are scheduled to rip your shirt off and play your hits to an estimated 100 million TV viewers at America’s biggest sporting occasion is probably a very good time to release a new album.

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