Twelve years ago, almost to the day, I left a Mary J. Blige concert swearing up and down the opening act, a young r&b singer Usher, was the next Michael Jackson.
This wasn’t quite an act of music journalism shamanism: as part of a artistic defining set, the twenty year year old wunderkind, riding “You Make Me Wanna” and his sophormore album My Way, donned the high hat, the spot light, and did an MJ medley and it fit him well and as the crowd screamed, I thought, finally, somebody was ready to pick up the mantle.
But he didn’t.
Why?
Because he doesn’t understand white pop music well enough. Confessions, seven years later, would be his next chance to cross it over and while he could always nail a “Don’t Stop till You Get Enough”, his “She’s Out Of My Life” faltered. He never wrote the white’s the song they wanted to hear.
This isn’t a put down. I love Raymond Vs Raymond -if Drake fucks up his first album, it’ll be the hip hop dance album of the year, but it won’t reach middle America. It doesn’t fulfill Jackson’s promise of seduction but gentle for all the moves. Usher is not inclusive enough as he dives into the clubs, he isn’t a sweet boy. That twenty year old who seemed to hold the audience in his careess did nothing of the sort. He was a Tiger seducer and by this time, a thirty-two year old divorcee who, unlike say Tiger Woods, has no celebrity endorsements to worry about, and doesn’t give a fuck if you don’t want him to fuck you on the dancefloor and then walk off to the VIP section with Nicki Minaj and Will. I. Am.
This is not seduction, it is status and the music, even his soul man Confessions and admitting it’s the point of the brilliant “Yeah”, can’t get out of the club. And so twelve years later, Usher is happy with his best selling album of the week, and his own proto-MJ Justin Bieber, and his dreams of world conquest MJ style, so musical articulate twelve years go, is now officially over.