Coming Home

by Usher

Overview

Usher was at an elevated if odd juncture when he released Coming Home. Delivered between the end of his twice-extended Las Vegas residency and Super Bowl LVIII halftime performance, the album also preceded a tour he named Past Present Future to signal that he wouldn't be content to do just the hits. The singer was striving to remain relevant while recognizing his status as a legacy act. He had surprised with "A" (a Zaytoven collaboration recorded while he was working on this album), teased the possibility of a sequel to the diamond platinum Confessions, given a nostalgic NPR Tiny Desk Concert (with nothing post-Confessions in the set list), and maintained visibility with occasional singles and featured appearances, often teamed with younger artists. His first true studio album in eight years attempts a similar balance. It does represent a sort of homecoming -- he's reunited with executive producer L.A. Reid after a two-decade split -- while warding off any perception that it's Confessions 2 under another title. Like all of Usher's earlier post-millennial LPs, Coming Home is long and pieced together. None of the collaborators, a mix of longtime partners and new associates, is on more than a handful of the 20 tracks. It starts at what sounds like a closing chapter of a love story: hard-fought resolution of romantic perseverance through slick dance-pop. In the following consecutive songs, Usher amicably breaks up with Summer Walker, serenades Latto (helped a second time by Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl"), laments falling in love, gets lascivious (with "leave you for dead" a strange declaration of conquest), and longs for an ex. His and H.E.R.'s lovely piano duet "Risk It All" is then lifted from the soundtrack for The Color Purple. After a few more adequate songs without sonic or lyrical linearity -- a tender collaboration with simpatico Afrobeats producer/singer Pheelz stands out most -- the album hits its stride with a sequence of slow jams demonstrating that Usher is at the top of his game as a singer, still much more than a mere entertainer. A couple tracks pair him with early partners Jermaine Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox, and while those are fine, they're eclipsed by the Minneapolitan pop-funk of "I Love U" (the-Dream, Tricky Stewart, and D'Mile) and smudged electro of "Luckiest Man" (Brandon "B.A.M." Hodge). Usher is in his element, at his most charming, throughout that stretch of the album. The finishing touch is the "Usher remix" of Jung Kook's rubbery disco-funk hit "Standing Next to You," thereby making another intercontinental connection -- and sounding only a little more randomly placed than anything else on offer. ~ Andy Kellman

Product Details

Release Date:	02/09/2024
Label:	MEGA/GAMMA.
UPC:	0617513770278

Tracks

1. Keep on Dancin'
2. Good Good
3. A-Town Girl
4. Cold Blooded
5. Coming Home
6. Kissing Strangers
7. Risk It All [From the Original Motion Picture "The Color Purple"]
8. Bop
9. Stone Kold Freak
10. Ruin
11. BIG
12. On the Side
13. I Am the Party
14. I Love U
15. Please U
16. Luckiest Man
17. Margiela
18. Room in a Room
19. One of Them Ones
20. Standing Next to You [Usher Remix]

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Usher   Primary Artist,Featured Artist
Patrick "Guitarboy" Hayes   Bass,Fuzz Guitar
The-Dream   Featured Artist
H.E.R.   Featured Artist
21 Savage   Featured Artist
Latto   Featured Artist
Jung Kook   Featured Artist
Summer Walker   Featured Artist
Pheelz   Featured Artist
Kosine   Saxophone
Phil Cornish   Keyboards

Technical Credits

Usher Raymond IV   Composer,Executive Producer
Antonio Reid   Executive Producer
Patrick "Guitarboy" Hayes   Composer,Producer
Kawan "KP" Prather   A&R
Ron Laffitte   Management
Keith Thomas   A&R
Hulio   Mixing
Aakomon "AJ" Jones   Design,Art Direction
Demonica Santiago   A&R
Allen Chiu   Design,Art Direction
Ryan Toby   Composer
Michael Danyell Cole Jr.   Composer
Kosine   Mixing,Producer,Drum Programming
Emerson Mancini   Mastering
Bellamy Brewster   Design,Photography,Art Direction
Jesse Allen   A&R
Larry Jackson   Executive Producer
Megan Millus   A&R
Phil Cornish   Composer,Producer