The healing powers of Vegas have baptized him and made him anew. For Usher, Vegas is a place of renewal, a place of rebirth. You see, Usher believes in Las Vegas, like someone who saw the glamorous first hour of Casino but not the subsequent stressful two hours of Casino. “Singin’ in the Rain” plays as plumes of water burst into the sky, twirling and twisting in concert, and Usher just sort of mindlessly sings along. The real human-size version is next to me, wistfully staring at the Bellagio fountain show as traffic slows to a crawl. There’s a 40-foot-tall version of Usher in front of me on an LED billboard advertising 2023 dates for Usher: My Way, the Las Vegas Residency. It’s-forgive me-10 o’clock, on the dot, and Usher and I are in an SUV cruising the streets. But it was his “Confessions Part II” flourish, framing his face with sideways peace signs and whispering “Watch this,” that was too extra to not go viral. “And people loved it.” NPR listeners voted it their favorite Tiny Desk of the year, with 14 million views and counting. “I went to Tiny Desk and I literally sang my classic records,” says Usher. The performance was ostensibly a celebration of his second album’s 25th anniversary, but really it was a celebration of one man’s continued dominance: Old music from Usher is better than new music from almost anyone else. Usher was as warm and charming and perpetually youthful as ever, dressed like someone who had beamed back into the Matrix. I want to be better than what I was,” Usher says, then adds, with a wry laugh, “That might be a problem.” He hasn’t released an album in what feels like forever: The last time Usher put out a full-length solo album, Obama was still in the White House and it was a Tidal exclusive.īut the Usherssance fully washed over us last summer when he sang stripped-down versions of his hits for NPR’s Tiny Desk series. He hit a creative wall and was frustrated with the industry. Fans responded with an emphatic, roaring, squealing: Yes!!!!īut the more he worked on the album, the less interested he was in making another Confessions. “Dis what yall want…” Usher wrote in a caption on Instagram. The prospect of a sequel caused a minor internet uproar. In 2019, Usher teased his ninth studio album with the maybe-title Confessions 2. “I haven’t gone country,” Usher tells me, “but I’m just sayin’.” That’s the thing about Usher. But he’s proud of his whole catalog, EDM phase included. Some music critics have long dinged him for this, his genre hopping, his uncanny ability to figure out what an Usher song should sound like in the key of the day’s most popular music. Usher can make the best of traditional R&B (“U Got It Bad”) or bring his falsetto to the most thrilling EDM-tinged R&B (“Climax”). In the late ’90s, Usher rode a sensual stream of hits produced by Jermaine Dupri to stardom before going supernova with Confessions, the 2004 album that transformed the singer into a bad boy. “I don’t feel like I’ve ever been in competition with anyone else,” he says cheerfully. But Usher doesn’t view his career in competitive terms. His long list of hits also eclipses the catalog of Justin Timberlake, the closest thing he’s had to a true rival. Kelly, and has more number ones than his immediate successor, Chris Brown. He outlasted his immediate predecessor, R. He’s been making music for three decades now, and was at the center of pop music for two of them. He doesn’t look like it, but Usher is 44. I turn around and he’s fleeing the scene like the Hamburglar with two armfuls of goodies, grinning: “You’re going to pass these up?!” On the way out, we are offered gift bags full of chocolate, which everyone politely declines.Įveryone, that is, but Usher. There is a dinner reservation at Carbone waiting. After about an hour-just long enough for a tipsy woman to ask Usher if he’s seen White Lotus-we retreat to the car. He graciously chats with all of them and poses for selfies. A string of MGM bigwigs-and the MGM bigwigs’ wives and kids and kids’ college friends-catch word that Usher is in the back and quickly arrive to schmooze. Someone gets Usher a drink, and a charcuterie board appears for the rest of us. We are led to a back room, with a small bar, a few tables, and metallic streamers cheerily, if haphazardly, hanging on the walls. “Let me-I’ll go get someone.” But then Usher smiles at her and she smiles back and that idea of going to get someone slips her mind. “We didn’t know you were coming!” she says.
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