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Usher’s King of R&B Crown Fits Perfectly on ‘Coming Home’ Album: Stream It Now

The Super Bowl LVIII halftime performer's ninth LP is proof that he's still got game.

Usher

Usher

Bellamy Brewster

Usher is firmly in his zone on his long-awaited ninth album, Coming Home. The 45-year-old R&B veteran who is gearing up to take the stage for the halftime show at Sunday’s (Feb. 11) Super Bowl LVIII dropped the 20-track, guest-packed collection on Friday morning (Feb. 9) and it is everything you’d want from the “Yeah!” singer.

On his first studio album since 2016’s Hard II Love, Usher serves up all the low-boil seductive jams you’d expect, from the simmering not-together-but-it’s-fine single “Good Good” with Summer Walker and 21 Savage to the bubbling miss-you-much ballad “Kissing Strangers,” on which he croons, “How we go from strangers kissing to kissing strangers?”


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After opening with the finger-snap, Michael Jackson-meets-Afrobeats Burna Boy collab “Coming Home,” Usher shows love to his hometown in the Billy Joel-interpolating, Latto-featuring “A-Town Girl,” which flips the Piano Man’s tony East Coast-repping 1983 hit “Uptown Girl” into a dirty south homage to a woman who knows how to twerk and skate.

There is, of course, plenty of heartbreak (the brooding “Cold Blooded” with The-Dream), disco-fueled confident swagger (“Big”), Eurosynth midtempo exhortations to keep the party going (“Keep on Dancin'”) and straight-up all-night-long sex jams (“Stone Kold Freak”).

The collection is packed with a parade of guest vocalists and rappers, from the meditative H.E.R. collab on “Risk It All” from The Color Purple soundtrack, to the seductive “Ruin” with Nigerian rapper/producer Pheelz, on which serial seducer Usher laments that his ex “ruined me for everybody,” even as he boasts that other women keep blowing up his phone. The album ends with the remix of Usher’s collab with K-pop icon Jung Kook from BTS on the latter’s earworm single, “Standing Next to You.”

And, not to worry, Ush has plenty of slow jams for those couple skates (“I Love U,” “Please U,” “Luckiest Man”) on the collection as well. Super Bowl LVIII will take place on Feb. 11 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas and air on CBS and stream on Paramount+, Sling TV, Hulu+Live TV and FuboTV.

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Stream Coming Home below.

This article was originally published by Billboard U.S.

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Born Ruffians
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Born Ruffians

FYI

New & Upcoming Canadian Albums: Broken Social Scene's 'You Forgot it In People' Gets Reimagined, Born Ruffians and Mother Mother Drop New Music

This week also brings news of new albums from veteran Canadian singer-songwriters Patrick Watson, Ron Sexsmith and Kathleen Edwards. Check out the full calendar of new releases here.

It's a nostalgic week for Canadian indie rock.

Today (June 6) sees the release of ANTHEMS: A Celebration of Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People – a front-to-back "reimagining" of Broken Social Scene's classic 2003 album. The album includes covers of every song by artists and mbands including Maggie Rogers and Sylvan Esso, Toro y Moi, The Weather Station, serpentwithfeet and more. The album coincides with the streaming premiere of the Broken Social Scene documentary It’s All Gonna Breakon Crave.

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