But during Usher’s 8701 and Confessions days he WAS essentially Adele and Bruno Mars. Probably more popular during the Confessions album. The amount of streams Let it Burn, Yeah, My Way and Confessions Part II alone would have gotten would have been ridiculous. Confessions is an all-time great album, with soooo many hits. Chris Brown doesn’t have anything to compare. His best album is probably on the same level as 8701 or My Way. Which is also nothing to scoff at.Ushers 75 million count by the RIAA is singles and albums too. You're acting as if the way the RIAA does its count magically changed and it hasn't except to include the effect of streaming which has made it harder for artists to sell music. The fact is no one buys music anymore they stream. In Ushers prime you had to either get a bootleg, borrow from a friend or buy the album. Now you can stream on your favorite site or if you dont have an account go on YouTube.
The streaming/download formula is 10 song downloads or 1500 streams equal 1 album sale.
Which means an artist has to get 1.5 Billion streams or 10 million song downloads to go platinum on an album. Which means if Usher dropped 'My way' or '8701' right now he would need 12 Billion streams or 80 million song downloads to be certified sell 8x platinum. It's rare for a hip hop or rnb artist to go platinum now, only 4 did this year. in Ushers time it was common. Nowadays If you're not Adele or Bruno Mars it's impossible.
CB would've been a bigger artist sales wise if he had come out in Ushers time because it would've been easier to sell albums. Why do you think record labels came up with the 360 deal? It's because streaming has made it so much harder to monetize and sell albums and they started tapping other artist revenue generators.
Now Chris Brown’s feature game does surpass Usher’s… by a mile. But I don’t judge an artist by features. It takes much more to carry a whole (or most of) song by yourself, let alone a whole album.


generations had Twitter, the Michael Jackson versus Prince wars would have been brutal.
