The Story of USHER in 20 Songs

With USHER headlining this year’s Apple Music Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show, he’s guiding us through the songs and eras that have defined his catalog—one that’s as rich in romantic fire as it is hits.

The NFL surprised and delighted fans of both football and timeless R&B back in September when it announced that USHER would be headlining the Apple Music Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show. There is one person, however, who would claim to have been a lot less shocked than the rest of us. “I think being able to see performances from artists like Michael, Prince, and, to be perfectly honest, to see artists that started after I did get it—I was like, ‘Man, at some point I need to get a call,’” USHER joked with Zane Lowe on the day of the announcement. “But I'm really happy that I'm joining that short list of legacy artists from my genre who deserve this moment.” In 2024, it’s hard to imagine anyone more deserving. Roughly 30 years into a career steeped with more hit songs than you could house in a single “best of” album, the man born Usher Raymond IV is also fresh off an extremely well-received 100-date residency in Las Vegas. And to let USHER tell it, his time there has only refined his understanding of how beloved he is. “Every night performing in Las Vegas is a vivid reminder of all the different audiences that I have acquired over time,” he told Apple Music Radio’s Estelle when they spoke upon the 25th anniversary of his breakthrough album My Way. USHER’s warm tenor and heavenly falsetto have been enchanting R&B fans as far back as his 1994 self-titled debut. He’d relocated from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Atlanta at just 13 years old and was soon discovered by Bobby Brown’s bodyguard, who got him a meeting with L.A. Reid. The LaFace Records exec was instantly smitten, signing him before shipping him off to NYC to study under the tutelage of one of the moguls of that moment, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. (You know, how it always happens.) “I think LA, what he did is send me to New York to really gain more confidence,” USHER says. “Because he didn't want me to be the normal young pop star who then has to deal with the transition of being a child star to becoming an adult artist. They wanted to make that transition a little bit easier.” It was Puff who gave him the New York swagger he oozed on songs like “Think of You,” but Usher the album made way for a breakout sophomore project created in collaboration with Jermaine Dupri—the producer responsible for kiddie rap sensations Kris Kross and also Da Brat, and the person who would become one of USHER’s most storied collaborators. “JD has an understanding of what young hip-hop sounds like,” USHER says. “He just understood how to translate it in a way that felt like the South, but it felt cool. It felt like, I want to wear what those kids got on, they’re cool. They got a little bit of hip-hop, but it ain’t New York hip-hop. It ain’t LA hip-hop.” Dupri's guidance seemed to be just what a young USHER needed to spread his wings in the tradition of the greats he'd looked up to as a child. “After that first album, I really decided that I wanted to do things my way,” he told Estelle. “And it was kind of a collective of all the places that I had gone, the things I'd seen, inspiration. From Prince to Little Richard to Madonna—you got Michael, you got Hall & Oates, Barry White, Donna Summer—whether it was skating or whether it was the emotions of Marvin Gaye and the depth of what that was—and then a little bit of hip-hop. Eazy-E, and the Ohio Players—all these inspirations, they were a part of what made me passionate about music.”

The opening lines of “Nice & Slow” told us where USHER would be on a given day at “7 o’clock, on the dot,” but it was his third album, 8701, that told us where he was going. He continued his work with big bro JD (“U Got It Bad”) and absorbed the guidance of tried-and-true R&B hitmakers like Babyface (“If I Want To”), Trackmasters, and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (“U Remind Me”) while also making it a point to put on for the future-facing sounds of a buzzing production duo called The Neptunes (“I Don’t Know,” “U Don’t Have to Call”). His North Star was R&B in all of its multitudes, the singer reaching back to the music of his childhood for a blueprint. “As an artist, you have to think about what is going to make the older generations feel like, ‘Oh man, they see us, they felt us, they were inspired by us—they want to support us,’” he says. “Furthermore, we want to celebrate them. On this album, I was like, let me go back to all of my inspirations from 1987—which is when I found music—up until 2001 when I created this album. So I named it 8701.”

Quantifying the impact of USHER’s 2004 album Confessions is no easy task, but you can basically chronicle the world of contemporary R&B in the terms of “pre” and “post” the album’s release, because it is and was that impactful. But to let USHER tell it, the album was simply the culmination of his experience performing up to that time. “8701, My Way—all of those albums led up to that moment,” USHER told Lil Wayne on Apple Music’s Young Money Radio. “All of that being on the road, being out there with your fans, being direct—that right there made it number one. And also, the conversation is what made it so potent.” To be clear, he's talking about “Confessions” parts one and two and “Burn,” a Jermaine Dupri- and Bryan-Michael Cox-produced trio of songs that ignited impassioned debates about whether or not he'd actually stepped out on then-partner Chilli of TLC fame. “The first name for the album was Real Talk,” he says. “I was like, ‘Let's have all of the most difficult conversations on one album.’ A lot of that was The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill that inspired me, because I felt like in her creative, it was a therapy session with kids—what if men decided to get in a room and really be straight-up with each other and just say the craziest things that are happening in their lives, and be able to put those in song form to create a story and a narrative around it?” Confessions is salacious, but it’s also one of the most rewarding listening experiences in R&B history, an album embedded deep in the hearts of the fans who spun it back endlessly at the time of its release. From songs like “Yeah!”—the world-breaking pop distillation of Atlanta crunk music—to the raging sultriness of “Can U Handle It?,” the love-drunk pledge to undying obedience that is “Superstar,” and the Timberland-tough hip-hop sensibility of Jadakiss collaboration “Throwback,” you're hard-pressed to find another album as diverse and synergistic, regardless of which genre you're looking in.

“Grown and sexy” is maybe too tired a term to fully encapsulate what USHER meant to R&B post-Confessions, but it’s not altogether inaccurate either. The USHER of 2008’s Here I Stand, 2010’s Raymond v Raymond, and even 2012’s Looking 4 Myself was a man at ease in his sexuality, but one who relished the idea of living in love. “Love in This Club” (parts one and two) was less about the urgency of horniness than falling hard for someone new, and “There Goes My Baby” is as wholesome a ballad as you’ll find post-New Jack Swing. The artist fans were by now affectionately referring to as Ursh was also comfortable enough in his own skin to take the risks he needed to expound his practice. In the moment, “Trading Places” was groundbreaking for the way it upended heteronormative relationship roles, but it was the Diplo-produced, electronica-leaning crossover record “Climax” that empowered the singer in a way he’d not previously experienced. “I couldn't wait to get back to Atlanta to go play it for everybody,” USHER says. “All of the writers who had wrote songs for me, I was like, ‘Yo, listen to this song. I wrote this one.’ I wanted them to be proud of me, man. I was so proud of it because it was the first song that I'd ever sat in the studio and wrote in a way that I felt like, ‘Oh, this is a song that could be a hit.’”

One thing about all-time greats is that they can’t help but to usher in new waves of talent. Mr. Raymond himself has been nothing if not welcoming to a generation of stars that have bloomed in his image. COMING HOME, specifically, is a testament to this part of his practice, featuring guest appearances from Jung Kook, H.E.R., 21 Savage, and of course Summer Walker, the undeniable young R&B diva whose 2019 USHER collab “Come Thru” reintroduced an Atlanta OG to a new generation of R&B fans. These are artists who were born under the banner of USHER, stars who will carry his influence with them the way he did the heroes of his own childhood. They’ve been called upon, in this specific instance, to help an icon express himself in a way that will bring us all closer together. “COMING HOME is a love letter to the experience that I have as a man,” he says. “It’s filled with romance. Songs like ‘Risk It All’ are very obviously about a romantic journey. I thought I’ve felt love so many times, but this time it's like, should I make this decision again knowing what I know, that it could go bad? Nah, I'm really going to risk it all. Let's go, man. Let's fall in love. You got to find ways to be able to help people say, ‘I love you.’”

• USHER's Road to Halftime