Usher - Looking 4 Myself

It was with all the finesse and artistry of a whoopee cushion at the Royal Albert Hall that 2010's OMG fell into my ears. Those who knew me then will be familiar with my scrunched up faces and malevolent glares towards anyone who played the track. It was total fucking garbage. Let's admit it and move on. Mistakes were made.

Usher's career though has always been a series of peaks and troughs. For every OMG there's a Yeah! For every Without You there's a Confessions Pt. II. The man, now on album #7, might well have earned a new army of haters for inflicting Justin Bieber upon the world, but surely the most reasonable of detractors must be willing to acknowledge his variety of talents. A voice that can melt butter, a knack for the industry and a smooth dancer, Usher has essentially dominated the male R&B scene since 1997. A far more direct (and easier to swallow) influence on the likes of Chris Brown, Ne-Yo and Jason Derulo than Michael Jackson (because surely, looking up to the King of Pop would urge you to step away from something like Yeah 3x or Ridin' Solo), there may be an artistic backlash against the man but that was thoroughly dismissed with this year's release of Climax. Let's see why.

'Why' exactly won't be answered just yet: Looking 4 Myself opens with another will.i.am. production - 'Can't Stop Won't Stop'. Sampling (you'd think will.i.am. was out of original ideas or something) the chorus to Billy Joel's Uptown Girl the track is, predictably, a shrill, thudding mess of repetitive, mundanely explicit lyrics. Truly awful. With a brisk click of "next track" though we can move onto the far superior 'Scream'. With the writing and production team behind 2010's DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love it should give you some indication of the general thematics: pulsating, sweaty and sexual dance music. And yet, despite being wholly absent of any artistic worth, it's as satisfying and catchy as dance tracks get. If looking for something more resonant, however, 'Climax' shan't disappoint. Here, Usher's syrupy falsettos ebb and flow smoothly, protesting "you say it's better if we love each other separately" with "I can't get what we had out my mind". The real sparkle here though is the gentle, tense Diplo production, particularly in the verses.

Similarly cool productions come from Danja in the forms of 'I Care for U' and 'Show Me', the former a dubstep-fused ballad with few stand-out moments, the latter a cute piano-sampling club track that implores "if you find yourself not knowing what to do/ just lift your hands up high, improvise". The star-studded nature of 2010's Raymond vs. Raymond was largely the album's undoing (in the cases of will.i.am., T.I. and Ludacris, at least - the Nicki Minaj spot on Lil Freak was pretty decent), but here Usher's sensible to use them sparingly: 'Lemme See' opts for the perennially excellent Rick Ross, and although he thrives, he never steals the show. Similarly, Pharrell Williams lends a fun but not overbearing hand on 'Twisted', advising women on how to use lipstick whilst Usher observes as a "booty substitutes". Fans of subtlety in lyrics might want to avert their eyes from 'Dive', which genuinely contains the chorus lines "it's raining inside your bed, no parts are dry/ loving makes you so wet, your legs, your thighs" - but they're delivered in such an innocently sweet vocal that it's easy to mistake as sensuality.

A lot of the themes shown here are hardly new or original: 'What Happened To U' sees Usher dismissing all of his material possessions in mourning of a previous lover, but some of the lyrics are interesting and wrought ("Did what I wanted, freaked out the honeys/ I stayed on their mind, mine was on the money"). Empire of the Sun's Luke Steele lends a sunkissed vibe to the title track, and again Usher's on the retrospective in the spoken: "I was on a journey, trying to figure out who I really was/ Then I realised that, when you're not here, half of me is gone". Of course, much of the soul-searching has to inevitably pave way for hands-in-the-air synthpop, and 'Numb' fills that void if nothing else. Far more interesting though is 'Lessons for the Lover', effectively a poster for sexual therapy ("No, don't leave, don't go so easy/ let the argument turn you on").  Musical experimentation, as seen on Climax and Twisted, is rather the defining trait of Looking 4 Myself and the blues arrangement of 'Sins of my Father' serve as another pleasant surprise, proving a much more challenging and rewarding backdrop for Usher than your typical eurotrash. Eurotrash like 'Euphoria', the album's closer (I stick to the standard editions, bitches), which falls slightly into the Scream-good category rather than the Numb-bad one.

I'm not sure, then, if OMG was actually the greatest factor for this album's reception. Perhaps the standards and expectations were so desperately low that the only way was up, but surely few would've predicted an album as consistent and artistically varied as this. Granted, there are a couple of commercial inclusions designed to shift records, and they do spoil the listening somewhat, but there's enough experimentation and stamps of Usher's talents to thoroughly redeem them.

Rating: 7.5/10
Highlights: Climax, Show Me, Looking 4 Myself, Scream, Lemme See, Sins of my Father
Avoid: Can't Stop Won't Stop, Numb

Artwork Watch: Not so much an Adam's apple as an Adam's watermelon.
Up next: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros