Usher

With strobe synths stuttering beneath sweeping vocals, "Love in this Club" is the sort of soaring club jam that is a definitive summer jam. Nothing else here quite reaches those heights. Second single "Moving Mountains" undercuts Usher's impeccably smooth vocals with barely audible noise churn, reinforcing the lyrics' themes of abandonment, futility and loss. Though, overall, the melodies on Here I Stand are slightly duller than on Confessions, this is very much in line with Usher's previous work, balancing conventional R&B with hip-hop flourishes.

There comes a time in every R&B singer's life when he stops catching panties and finds
himself a wifey. Having married and fathered a son last year, Usher is back to velvety
slow-jams, this time embracing domestic life's freaky side. On "Trading Places," which
recalls Prince's "The Beautiful Ones," Usher role-plays June Cleaver to his lady's Ward,
brewing her coffee and offering to be "on the bottom." And he spends two full s... More >