#Stone Kold Freak

[what-else-is-there]

..:: What Else Is There? Weekly :: 2024.02.15 ::..

// Usher certainly knows what side his bread is buttered on ands drops yet another provocative song full of yeahs on Stone Kold Freak.

// Kim Petras finally dispenses with all the innuendo and decides to just directly ask us what she wants to know on Can We Fuck?

// Armin Van Buuren cooks up a song that feels crisp and fresh while still having a nostalgic turn of the century trance sensibility on Lose This Feeling.

// Chelsea Wolfe weaves her dark magic to conjure an eerie and plodding ode to everybody's favorite type of creepy space on The Liminal.

// Warpaint coalesce together around a cool and echoing chant in order to muse upon how special it is to be a butterfly on Common Blue. Spotify Playlist YouTube Music Playlist

[ramp-it-up]

This new Ursher might be giving me some inspo. 👀🤭

[thisaintascenereviews]

Usher - Coming Home

Ursher’s back, baby. Right before his Super Bowl halftime show this past Sunday, which was absolutely great, he dropped his newest album, entitled Coming Home, and it seems like he’s been having a good weekend. This is his first album in eight years, not counting the collaborative album he released with Zaytoven in 2018, and it seems like Usher is having a career resurgence. That’s great, because it seems like that he’s finally getting the recognition he’s always deserved. He’s gotten some of it, but during the 2010s, and with how R&B has moved on from guys like Usher, it makes sense why his star power has slightly faded, at least in the mainstream. He’s still popular, especially for his past hits, but he’s become more of a legacy artist. Coming Home seems to aim to change that, and showcase Usher in the spotlight again, and the title has a few different meanings, whether it means that Usher is literally coming home after touring for so long, or coming home musically to his native Atlanta and utilizing more influences from where he grew up, reconnecting with a lot of songwriters, producers, and people that he made a lot of his big hits with (including LA Reid and Jermaine Dupri, among other people), or both. This album has more meanings than it seems to showcase, but the question is whether or not the album has been worth the wait. It’s been eight years since Hard II Love, and I just reviewed that album recently, ultimately spending some time with it before Coming Home came out, and I really enjoyed that album all these years later, despite having a lot of the same problems that most Usher albums have had for years. I was worried that Coming Home would have the same problems, or just not be as good, but I was absolutely surprised and kind of blown away with this album.

Yeah, Coming Home is great, and it’s the best Usher album we’ve gotten in years, but that comes down to a couple of things, mainly Usher himself. Usher sounds amazing on here, and it’s weird, because he sounds even better than he did on Hard II Love and he sounded great there. Usher has one of the best voices in R&B, if not all time, and he sounds effortless here. It could be that he’s given material that suits him better, and that complements his voice better, or that this record isn’t as reliant as trying to appeal to the new generation of artists. This album reunites him with a lot of his frequent collaborators that penned, or helped to pen, his best songs, and biggest singles, so a lot of this album has his classic sound on it, but this album does unfortunately have a lot of the same issues his other albums do, although part of it has become his brand. The main issue this album has is its inconsistency, because this album wants to be a lot of things at once, such as a 00s R&B record, a modern trap-influenced R&B album, or a pop album, and the thing is, Usher can pull it all off. He’s that good of a singer, and nowhere on this album does he sound out of place, or like he’s putting in any effort at all. He sounds fantastic, but that’s not the only thing I like about this album. The production and songwriting is solid throughout, too, whether it’s the classic R&B of songs like “I Am The Party,” “Kissing Strangers,” “I Love U,” or “Please U,” more modern-influenced cuts like “Stone Kold Freak,” “A-Town Girl” (which also samples and interpolates Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl”), or “Good Good,” or more straightforward pop cuts, such as “Big,” or “Keep On Dancin’.” A lot of the hooks and overall sounds are pretty good here, if not utterly impeccable, but that is partially due to Usher himself killing it,

Really, this album comes down to three things that I would consider to be issues, if not mild issues. Those three things would be its inconsistency with its sound, as I talked about earlier, its lyrics, and its length. I don’t particularly have enough of an issue with any of these things to say it ruins the album, but these are things that are apparent on every Usher album. The lyrics, for starters, aren’t anything to write home about, but they’re better here than they were on Hard II Love, at least to a small degree. There are songs with solid lyrics, especially for Usher’s brand of grown R&B, but it’s nothing you haven’t heard before, or that will blow your mind. The album is also a bit too long, clocking in at 68 minutes, but I don’t find the album too exhausting or too long. I’m surprised when the closing track plays, but this album could have afforded to cut a few songs, such as “Risk It All” that features H.E.R (and is from The Color Purple remake), or the remix of “Standing Next To You” with BTS’s Jungkook, although the remix is honestly better. It could have trimmed a few songs from it, but the album isn’t long winded or boring. Usher remains engaged and energetic throughout this whole thing, and it keeps my attention throughout its runtime. This is one of my favorite albums of the year so far, and it’s nothing short of a triumphant return for Usher. I really hope this album does well for him, and he gets maybe some Grammy noms next year, but this is a great album, warts and all.