When I interviewed Usher on Wednesday, I asked him if R&B had fallen off since he was one of the biggest stars of the genre in the late ’90s and ’00s.
“I don’t think that R&B is not what it used to be,” he responded. “I think that there’s not enough platforms for R&B to be what it used to be.”
No shade — but to my mind, he was being kind.
Because Usher’s new album “Coming Home” — which dropped on Friday, two days before he headlines the halftime show at Super Bowl LVIII — is a refreshing return to the kind of authentic R&B that has been missing from today’s music.
On his first solo LP in eight years — since 2016’s “Hard II Love” — the artist born Usher Raymond IV takes R&B fans back to a place that feels just like home.
It’s a feeling that you didn’t even know how much you missed until the 45-year-old superstar makes you feel it again.
After all, it’s Usher, baby.
From the “Off the Wall”-era Michael Jackson moves of “Keep on Dancin’” and the Prince-esque panty-dropping of “Please U” to the spacey electro-soul of “Kissing Strangers” — which shows you just how much The Weeknd owes to Usher — the man is the smoothest of operators.
He even makes “On the Side” — which reunites Usher with early producer Jermaine Dupri (“Nice & Slow,” “U Got It Bad”) — the sweetest of side-chick songs. And it deserves to be a hit.
On “Coming Home,” Usher also finds the sweet spot between the fresh and the familiar, whether it’s in the Afrobeats exploration of the title track (featuring Burna Boy) and “Ruin” (with Pheelz) or the way the Atlanta native flips Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” into “A-Town Girl” with a rap assist from Latto.
Elsewhere, Usher enlists other younger artists — including R&B stars Summer Walker (“Good Good”) and H.E.R. (“Risk It All”) — who surely grew up worshipping him.
No doubt BTS singer Jung Kook — who rocks with Usher on a remix of “Standing Next to You” — revered him too.
Meanwhile, “Bop” is just that, with a grown-ass groove that is low-key sexy.
And even if “Coming Home” will never come close to selling as much as 1997’s “My Way,” 2001’s “8701” or 2004’s “Confessions,” Usher shows that — 30 years after making his self-titled debut at 15 — he hasn’t lost any of his powers of seduction.