“A place where I can be creative.” Onstage, that means that he’s putting on the biggest, most brazen show of his life. “Las Vegas is very important because it actually speaks to my career to be in a place where I can dream, where I can incubate ideas,” he says. The healing powers of the city have baptised him and made him anew. For Usher, Vegas is a place of renewal, a place of rebirth. You see, Usher believes in Las Vegas, like someone who saw the glamorous first hour of Casino but not the subsequent stressful two hours of Casino. “Singin’ in the Rain” plays as plumes of water burst into the sky, twirling and twisting in concert, and Usher just sort of mindlessly sings along. There’s a 40-foot-tall version of Usher in front of me on an LED billboard advertising 2023 dates for “Usher: My Way, the Las Vegas Residency.” The real human-size version is next to me, wistfully staring at the Bellagio fountain show as traffic slows to a crawl. It’s – forgive me – 10 o’clock, on the dot, and Usher and I are in an SUV cruising the streets. Usher believes in Las Vegas, like someone who saw the glamorous first hour of Casino but not the subsequent stressful two hours of Casino. “Fat Joe says yesterday’s price is not today’s price,” he says, shrugging. Usher says he tries not to get too swept up in the highs and lows. Kim Kardashian was devastated when bad weather threw a wrench into her birthday plans, as the private jet had to turn around and she ended up missing the show. After that came the amped-up version at the Park MGM that made him the new king of Las Vegas, with secondary-market ticket prices that skyrocketed like 2021 GameStop stock. Then, in 2021, just as the world was shaking off the pandemic and masked partying became socially acceptable, Usher tried out the 20-show run at Caesars Palace. I want to be better than what I was,” Usher says, then adds, with a wry laugh, “That might be a problem.” He hasn’t released an album in what feels like forever: the last time he put out a full-length solo album, Obama was still in the White House and it was a Tidal exclusive. He hit a creative wall and was frustrated with the industry. Fans responded with an emphatic, roaring, squealing: Yes!!!!īut the more he worked on the album, the less interested he was in making another Confessions. “Dis what yall want…” Usher wrote in a caption on Instagram. The prospect of a sequel caused a minor internet uproar. In 2019, Usher teased his ninth studio album with the maybe-title Confessions 2. “I haven’t gone country,” Usher tells me, “but I’m just sayin’.” That’s the thing about Usher. But he’s proud of his whole catalogue, EDM phase included. Some music critics have long dinged him for this: his genre hopping, his uncanny ability to figure out what an Usher song should sound like in the key of the day’s most popular music. Usher can make the best of traditional R&B (“U Got It Bad”) or bring his falsetto to the most thrilling EDM-tinged R&B (“Climax”). In the late ’90s, Usher rode a sensual stream of hits produced by Jermaine Dupri to stardom before going supernova with Confessions, the 2004 album that transformed the singer into a bad boy. “I don’t feel like I’ve ever been in competition with anyone else,” he says cheerfully.
But Usher doesn’t view his career in competitive terms. His long list of hits also eclipses the catalogue of Justin Timberlake, the closest thing he’s had to a true rival. Kelly, and has more number ones than his immediate successor, Chris Brown. He outlasted his immediate predecessor, R. He’s been making music for three decades now, and was at the centre of pop music for two of them.
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