Usher Perry Knotts/Getty Images
Usher continues to reign because the “king of R&B” with the assistance of his new album, which he calls his “magnum opus.”
Days earlier than hitting the sphere of Las Vegas’s Allegiant Stadium for the Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show, Usher, 45, launched Coming Home, on Friday, February 9. His ninth studio album is his first full-length undertaking since 2016’s Hard II Love, and comes when he’s having fun with a profession resurgence.
He advised Entertainment Weekly that inspiration for the brand new album struck throughout a visit to Ghana, citing the South African subgenre of home music referred to as am a piano. He wished to discover the sound as Afrobeat grew in recognition in America. Thus, Burna Boy seems on the title observe, with Nigerian producer and singer-songwriter Pheelz visitor on the tune “Ruin.”
The album additionally boasts appearances from Summer Walker and 21 Savage (“Good Girl”), The-Dream (“Cold Blooded”), H.E.R. (“Risk It All”), Latto (“A-Town Girl”) and BTS’s Jungkook (“Standing next to U”).
Coming Home is “a love letter to my fans,” Usher advised HuffPost, “especially those ones who have stood with me through what has been perceived as tumultuous times and prayed for me or either had well wishes for me. I want you to know that I’m covered, that love is the reason why I’m able to continue to keep going.”
He additionally mentioned he wished to provide this new album to his supporters as a result of he wished to clarify “what I was going through” as a result of he’s not somebody who “necessarily talk(s) to the world.” Coming Home was a means for him to precise his feelings and experiences in his most popular medium. “I talk to the world through my music,” he mentioned.
Though Usher mentioned he accomplished Coming Home “about 10 times” earlier than releasing the album, in line with an interview with EW, the timing couldn’t be higher. Usher’s been engaged on the album for the previous couple of years, however different obligations – like his extremely profitable Las Vegas residency – drew his consideration away from the undertaking. “I wasn’t consistently just working on an album for five years, man,” he defined. “I would’ve went crazy,”
“But I did work on numerous amounts of songs and went through a great deal of transformation in the process,” he added. Usher additionally defined that the COVID-19 pandemic allowed him to replicate on “what matters” in life.
“I went through an entire world of experience from being a married man to a single man, to having and finding true love myself, and then finding a partner, and then the journey of what that is and what that has become, and is still becoming,” he defined.
In March 2018, Usher and his then-wife, Grace Harry (née Miguel), advised Us Weekly completely that that they had separated. Nine months later, he filed for divorce. In October 2021, he and Jenn Goicoechea welcomed their second baby. It was Usher’s fourth; he shares two sons with ex-wife Tameka Foster.
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