It’s impossible to condense USHER’s hit-packed, three-decade career into an hour-long mix, so Jermaine Dupri, who is one of the R&B icon’s longest-running and closest collaborators, sought to capture some of its lesser-known corners. “My very first song on this mix is not an USHER single,” he tells Apple Music. “USHER is very popular. If I started off with a popular No. 1 song, the average fan would listen and be like, ‘I heard this already. Why are y'all making so much hoopla about Jermaine making this mix?’” To keep fans on their toes, the veteran hip-hop producer—who worked with USHER on Confessions and Confessions Part II—offers listeners something different. “These are not the typical USHER records,” he says. (Diehard fans will notice that “My Way”, a major single from USHER’s sophomore album and the song that inspired the title of his latest Las Vegas residency, is not included.) Instead, the mix is a tour of highlights you might’ve missed: deep cuts, left-field collaborations and big, gorgeous ballads. Slow songs are unusual for Super Bowl Halftime shows, but Dupri says that’s what makes USHER’s billing so special. In his case, “the ballads are the records people want to hear,” he says. They’re the songs people sing along to, the tracks that go viral and that were easily the fan favourites at his headline-making residency. In other words, they’re USHER’s bread and butter. Says Dupri: “If people are excited about him doing the Super Bowl, then I believe he's going to give everybody exactly what they want.”