ARTIST: Usher
TITLE: “Papers”
WEB DEBUT: Oct. 5, 2009


ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: The first single to be released by Usher after his underperforming Here I Stand fizzled from pop’s forefront last year brings to mind the juiciest bits of his breakthrough album Confessions—impassioned R & B with lyrics that are plain-spoken about his personal life. Here, the papers in question are documents that will apparently seal his divorce from Tameka Foster, who he wed in 2007 and who somewhat famously drove a wedge between the singer and his mother. Don’t think he doesn’t address this fact in “Papers”—”I done damn near lost my mama / I done been through so much drama / I done turned into the man that I never thought I’d be”—and don’t think that he sounds even more fired up than he did when he was singing about getting super-naughty on his last album. Maybe he’s just one of those artists who needs to be aggressive in order to properly express himself?


WHERE TO HEAR IT: Usher’s site. Or right here: