When Usher takes the stage on Sunday, February 11, to headline the Apple Music Halftime Show at Super Bowl LVIII, streaming live on Paramount+, he’ll pass one of the few remaining milestones in his remarkable career.
The singer, songwriter, dancer, and actor has been one of the biggest names in R&B for longer than some of today’s stars can even remember. Seriously—when Usher dropped his self-titled debut album back in 1994, SZA was four years old and Summer Walker and H.E.R. weren’t born yet.
Over the decades, Usher has released eight studio albums (four of which have topped the Billboard 200) and scored an incredible nine No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100. He’s also won eight Grammy Awards, appeared in more than a dozen feature films, and made his mark on Broadway.
Given his crazy-deep catalog of hits and diverse range of collaborators—everyone from Lil Jon to David Guetta, Justin Bieber to Marshmello—Usher comes into his Super Bowl showcase with a lot of options. He’s primarily known as a suave, frequently shirtless R&B ladies’ man, but he’s long fused elements of hip-hop, pop, and dance music into his ever-evolving sound. He’ll hit you with bangers and ballads and everything in between.
In honor of Usher’s big Super Bowl moment, we’ve partnered with Paramount+ to trace the King of R&B’s path from talent show hopeful to world-conquering superstar. Read on for a recap of Usher’s amazing journey, and be sure to stream Super Bowl LVIII and the Apple Music Halftime Show via Paramount+ on February 11.
Rise to Fame
Usher Raymond IV was born in Dallas on October 14, 1978, and raised largely in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by his mother, Jonetta Patton, the choir director at the local church. The preternaturally talented youngster landed a spot in a boy band called NuBeginning when he was 12, but Patton knew her son was destined for more. She pulled him from the group and moved the family to Atlanta, where Usher crushed some local talent shows and nabbed an audition with L.A. Reid, co-founder of LaFace Records. Reid had Usher sing Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” to a roomful of smitten female staffers, and like that, the charismatic youngster had himself a deal.
But superstardom didn’t come overnight. Before he could record his debut album, Usher hit puberty, developed a bad case of acne, and lost his voice. He nearly got dropped by LaFace, but instead, the label sent him up to New York City to study with one Sean “Puffy” Combs. Puffy helped Usher develop the tough-guy persona found on 1994’s Usher, which sold only moderately well but yielded the Top 10 R&B hit “Think of You.”
It was a solid foundation on which to build a career, and that’s exactly what Usher did with his next album, 1997’s My Way. Both in terms of Billboard chart position (No. 1 on the Hot 100) and Genius data (322K+ pageviews), the top song off My Way is “Nice & Slow,” a satiny-smooth plea for intimacy notable for its direct language. Here’s Usher in the first verse, holding nothing back:
I pull up, anticipating
Good love, don’t keep me waiting
I got plans to put my hands in places
I never seen, girl, you know what I mean
Usher notched two more No. 1 pop singles, “U Remind Me” and “U Got It Bad,” with his third album, 2001’s 8701. (The title refers to the year he started singing publicly, 1987, and the year of the album’s release. It’s apparently a massive coincidence the album dropped 8/7/01.) He was on a roll, and yet his greatest triumph lay just around the corner.
King of Confessions
Going into the next album, producer and songwriter Jermaine Dupri, one of Usher’s primary collaborators, faced a problem. The public dug Usher’s music—dude had three No. 1 singles to prove that—but they weren’t necessarily invested in him as a person. Dupri decided the solution was to write songs that came from a more personal place—even if Dupri was drawing mostly from his own life experiences, not Usher’s. “It showed the power of what writing can do: The whole world bought into this as this man’s story, as the truth,” Dupri told Billboard years later.
Thus was born Confessions, an album written from the POV of a grown man coming clean about romantic indiscretions. The album’s lead single doesn’t exactly fit the theme, but it was a colossal hit. Produced by Atlanta crunk hero Lil Jon, who features on the track alongside the boundlessly entertaining Ludacris, “Yeah!” is a synth-streaked club-wrecker that naturally reached No. 1 on the Hot 100. It’s also surpassed 878.4K Genius pageviews, making it Usher’s third-biggest song on this site. Here’s our hero on the first verse, surrendering to lust on the dance floor.
Conversation got heavy (Hey)
She had me feelin’ like she’s ready to blow, oh (Watch out, watch out)
She was sayin’, “Come get me” (Come get me)
So I got up and followed her to the floor
Confessions wound up spawning four No. 1 singles, among them “Burn,” Usher’s top song on Genius with 1.2M pageviews. Produced by Dupri, who wrote the song with Usher and Bryan-Michael Cox based on a situation Usher was going through, “Burn” is about being honest with yourself and walking away from a bad relationship, even if doing so hurts like hell.
Let it burn, let it burn, gotta let it burn
Deep down, you know it’s best for yourself, but you
Hate the thought of her bein’ with someone else
But you know that it’s over, we knew it was through
The fourth Confessions chart-topper, “My Boo,” featuring Alicia Keys, appeared on the special edition of the album, and with 587.6K pageviews, it ranks as Usher’s fifth-biggest song on Genius. As opposed to some of the other songs on the LP, “My Boo” is a sweet, nostalgic ode to that first love you never really forget. Here’s Usher reminding Alicia how it used to be.
Do you remember, girl?
I was the one who gave you your first kiss
’Cause I remember, girl
I was the one who said, “Put your lips like this”
Confessions represents the absolute peak of Usher’s career. It sold 1.1 million copies in its first week and won Usher a Grammy for Best Contemporary R&B Album. In 2008, it was certified diamond, or 10x platinum, by the RIAA.
Long Live the King
Although Usher would never match the gargantuan sales of Confessions, he remained relevant into the following decade and beyond. His next three albums—2008’s Here I Stand, 2010’s Raymond v. Raymond, and 2012’s Looking 4 Myself—all topped the Billboard 200 album chart and produced massive singles.
Here I Stand, recorded after Usher married stylist Tameka Foster and became a father, was marketed as an album about growing up and maturing. That’s evident on tracks like “Prayer for You Interlude” and “Something Special,” but Usher wasn’t ready to stop the fun entirely. The chart-topping single “Love In This Club,” produced by Polow da Don and featuring Atlanta trap stalwart Jeezy, is another “Yeah!”-style party cut, except this time, Usher isn’t remotely conflicted about going home with the girl.
Looking in your eyes while you on the other side
I can’t take it no more, baby, I’m coming for you
You keep doing it on purpose, winding and working
If we close our eyes, it could just be me and you
By the time he released Raymond v. Raymond in 2010, Usher had been through more major life changes. Newly divorced, he was looking to reconnect with his bolder, sexier Confessions image. “Usher had a rough couple years,” said Mark Pitts, president of urban music at Jive Records, in an interview with The New York Times. “The scrutiny of everything going on, he was worrying too much about what people were thinking. We felt like we had to get his swagger back. Dust off the bed and get it popping and young again.”
Usher definitely got it popping with the album’s fourth single, “OMG,” a neon-lit thumper produced by Black Eyed Peas main man will.i.am, then at the height of his powers. “OMG” isn’t a million miles away from “Yeah!” or “Love In This Club,” though there’s perhaps a little more tenderness behind Usher’s tongue-wagging.
I fell in love with shawty when I seen her on the dance floor
(Oh oh oh-oh oh, oh oh oh-oh)
She was dancing sexy, pop-pop-popping, dropping, dropping low
(Oh oh oh-oh oh, oh oh oh-oh)
Never ever has a lady hit me on the first sight
“OMG” marks Usher’s final No. 1 pop hit to date, though he’s since amassed plenty of Top 40 hits, including last year’s “Good Good,” a collaboration with Summer Walker and 21 Savage that reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became Usher’s 16th No. 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. (Only Drake has topped that tally more times.)
Usher’s collab game has always been strong, and his second-biggest song on Genius, with 946.8K pageviews, is “The Matrimony,” off rapper Wale’s 2015 effort The Album About Nothing. This song is about something, namely marriage, and while Wale spends his verses explaining why he’s a flawed partner, Usher offers a voice or reassurance on the hook.
If there’s a question of my heart, you’ve got it
It don’t belong to anyone but you
If there’s a question of my love, you’ve got it
Baby, don’t worry, I’ve got plans for you
Coming Home
On February 9, two days before he grabs the world’s attention with the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show at Super Bowl LVII, Usher will release Coming Home, his ninth studio album and first since 2016’s Hard II Love. The album follows 2018’s A, a collaborative album made with producer Zaytoven, as well as a pair of successful Las Vegas residencies. For a while, Usher toyed with calling the new album Confessions 2, but as he told GQ in a recent interview, he’s not interested in repeating himself.
“I can’t be who I was,” Usher said. “I don’t want to be who I was. I want to be better than what I was.”
Stream Super Bowl LVIII and the Apple Music Halftime Show on Paramount+ on Sunday, February 11.
