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Hip-hop was a major influence because I came up in New York. Then you have your Keith Sweats and Bobby Browns. Those guys are the pioneers who created me. Also Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, Michael Jackson, Rick James - people who were blending worlds and ideas together. They made the Rolling Stones want to be recognized as an R&B band. I go way back to Ronald Isley, who was not given the respect he deserved. All the people I work with are trying to do something that hasn’t been done before. But that wasn’t traditionally how you launched an R&B artist. It felt good to be welcomed by the guys who were running hip-hop and R&B. Sure!, Kenny Greene from Intro, Kyle West, Faith Evans. Till the day I die, he’ll always be my brother, and we will always be close. Now, I can’t necessarily say those songs were as successful as my future records, but I think Puffy was toying with something that was creating a new frontier. The culture, how we were moving and living, was different.
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I wasn’t intended to make music that was just for kids. The same way Aaliyah arrived different and Brandy arrived different. Most enduring memory of recording 1994’s Usher with Diddy Usher’s main takeaway from it all: Artists need to build strong catalogues around the hits - “Don’t just make singles, make an experience” - and audiences must give the music the time and respect it deserves. He’s thrilled about pop fans’ renewed interest in dance music this year he just wishes more people got behind the EDM moves of 2010’s Raymond v.
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As much veneration as there may be in fan circles for his classics, Usher often faced noisy backlash whenever he tried to change the formula. The critical reception for Confessions and 2001’s 8701, both brimming with passionate performances and state-of-the-art production from hip-hop heavyweights, including the Neptunes and Atlanta’s Jermaine Dupri, never matched the audience’s enthusiasm either. Yes, the late-’90s and early-aughts records went supernova, but it took years for people to warm up to the 14-year-old singer working with Diddy and Jodeci, R&B pioneers who blessed the kid with songs whose themes exceeded his age. But I was just as interested in the times the singer’s meteoric career confounded his audiences. Usher is garrulous in conversation and unafraid to say he revolutionized some shit. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Adele’s 25, and Michael Jackson’s Bad.) ( Confessions’ peers in the diamond club include the Beatles’ Sgt. 1 singles, logged platinum-selling hits in three decades, and seen his 2004 record, Confessions, go diamond certified, an award for albums that manage to sell 10 million units. Those ideas would bear out loudly when clips from the NPR set went viral, reminding anyone within earshot that the man with the golden falsetto and stellar dance moves hasn’t lost his luster as a performer in the quarter-century since he spelled his name for us in 1997’s “Nice and Slow.” It’s generally a terrible idea to count that guy out. The Atlanta R&B veteran was gearing up for a new Las Vegas residency - last summer, he played 20 tantalizing shows in the reopened Coliseum at Caesars Palace this year, he’ll do 23 at the Park MGM - and he had a lot to say about creating a timeless catalogue of records his fans never get tired of. I spoke to Usher on the afternoon that his NPR Tiny Desk concert debuted. Photo-Illustration: Vulture Photo by Carlo Allegri/Getty Images