Indulgent, brooding, and - above all - undeniably infectious, 8701 is still everything versatile R&B should be. And yet the success of his third studio album, 8701, was as unprecedented for the artist as it was inevitable. Never straying from the nebulous, racialized category of “urban” music, Usher created - and dominated - his own lane in the mid-to-late ’90s.īy the early 2000s, Usher had established himself as a fresh-faced charmer with obvious potential. Here was an artist who could take a “soft” genre like R&B and push it beyond the doo-wop crooning of groups like Boyz II Men. The titular track set itself apart by introducing a cocky, unabashedly hypermasculine side of the newly “grown” Usher ( My Way was released a month before his 19th birthday). “Slow Jam,” which featured R&B princess Monica, was the soundtrack of a thousand prom slow dances (including Jordan and Tamera’s on Sister Sister). “Bedtime” featured the legend Babyface, “Nice & Slow” showed a more overtly sensual side of Usher, and “You Make Me Wanna” became the triflin’ simp anthem we didn’t know we needed. 15 on the Billboard 200 chart and featured a laundry list of iconic R&B songs so long it’s hard to believe they’re on the same album. He may have felt like a little brother trying on grown-folk music for size, but it worked.Īnd My Way, his 1997 sophomore album, showed that he was here to stay. But, with a bouncy earnest quality reminiscent of Tevin Campbell and a baby-faced yearning not unlike Jodeci, the tracks set 15-year-old Usher up as an R&B newcomer to watch.
Its biggest singles, “Think of You” and “Can U Get Wit It,” never broke above the 50s on the Billboard Hot 100. Usher, his eponymous 1994 debut, fell squarely in the tradition of the mid-’90s R&B released around it. I even gave in to the corny conceit that is “U-Turn,” quietly singing the chorus under my breath and reappropriating the wordplay any time my parents pulled one on the road.Īnd now, 15 years after its release, 8701 is still the album I turn to when I am struck with a sudden wave of appreciation for the glory that is early-2000s R&B.Ĩ701 was Usher’s first album released in the 2000s, and it diverged from his previous albums in that it expanded the artist’s range with artful, prominent nods to both pop and hip-hop. I memorized the choreography of the “U Remind Me” video after endless MTV2 loops, letting my shy girl moves take center stage when no one was around to see. I would dance around the house to “U Got It Bad,” twirling slowly as I imagined myself one day pining so hard after a man that I would “hang up and call right back” (ed. And so, of course, 8701 was the album I couldn’t stop playing. 8701 was the album I probably shouldn’t have been listening to. To my 10-year-old ears, Usher’s 8701 was verified grown ’n’ sexy music. Girl power! Or something.īut it was the other CD that really stuck with me. I would belt along to Songs in A Minor when no one was around and I fancied myself - and my dusty braids - as fly as Ms. That year, I had not one but two albums awaiting rotation. That year, my cousins had snuck me two CDs that signaled ya girl was growing up. Gone were the days of only being allowed to listen to Radio Disney. The summer I turned 10, I couldn’t wait to break out my Walkman.
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