Did Confessions stagnate Usher's career with albums?

[Rekkapryde]

Yea pretty much this.

Plus there were rumors that his wife was a jealous, insecure, bytch behind the scenes.

He still had classic songs and a lot of success though. Here I Stand and the Raymond Vs Raymond albums were very successful. And he had hits like OMG which went number 1.

An album like Confessions only comes along once per a popular artist’s career and the stars have to align perfectly. Confessions sold prime N’Sync numbers. Thats ASTOUNDING for a black artist, let alone a black R&B artist. Confessions is the Thriller of our generation (Millennials) before streaming, before digital downloads, that muthafukka sold 1 Million PURE copies in a week. There was no way he was ever going to replicate that.


So no, Confessions didn’t “stagnate” Usher’s career album wise. If you look at the numbers for his two albums after Confessions (Here I Stand/Raymond Vs Raymond) vs the two albums before Confessions, Here I Stand and Raymond Vs Raymond actually had better first week numbers, owing to his expanded audience from Confessions. Every artist wishes for a Confessions type album because it gives you a crossover (white) audience and a bigger international audience who will check for your subsequent follow-up work.

Think of this, Usher got to perform at the Superbowl, mostly because of CONFESSIONS, and then he released the Coming Home album, which was his highest debuting album in 8 years. Confessions is the gift that keeps on giving. It doesn’t hurt his albums, it helps.

right here

 

[FTBS]

Its called a peak for a reason. You arent gonna match that and you arent supposed to. Usher had a decade run anybody not named Mike would dream of as far as sales go. Also gotta remember what happened to mainstream R and B. We literally havent had a black R and B mainstream superstar debut since Chris Brown 20 years ago.

 

[The_Sheff]

Alot of artists don’t want to feel like they owe their careers to one person. Also alot of artists want to try something different and flex different creative muscles. Its the same reason MJ didn’t keep working with Quincy Jones after their legendary trilogy of albums, he pivoted to working with Teddy Riley because he wanted to try his hand at New Jack Swing. Its the same reason Nas didn’t just work with Premier, Q-Tip, and Pete Rock his entire career. Its why Jay gave Kanye and Just Blaze a shot, why Common moved on from No I.D. for a time, and so on and so forth. Artists want to try their hand at new sounds and subject matter. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.

Yeah, I see that but seems like if them albums start slipping you would go back to attempt to make something great again.

MJ and Quincy had a 3 albums run. These folks only giving JD one shot.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Pre-social media dominance.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Yall slept on that A-Town project

 

[darryl]

That album made him leapfrog over r Kelly because before that he was being compared to ginuwine and Tyrese and shyt. R Kelly was the undisputed king.

 

[Elim Garak]

My Way wasn’t a great album overall, but the hits on it were dope and propelled him to superstardom. I don’t really think it stagnated it so much as no matter how talented you are there is only so much good music an artist can make.

 

[Ironman]

His marriage really caused a rift on his women base

 

[Silkk]

He has classics after that, Confessions was just so great they get overlooked

 

[Big Boss]

Alot of artists don’t want to feel like they owe their careers to one person. Also alot of artists want to try something different and flex different creative muscles. Its the same reason MJ didn’t keep working with Quincy Jones after their legendary trilogy of albums, he pivoted to working with Teddy Riley because he wanted to try his hand at New Jack Swing. Its the same reason Nas didn’t just work with Premier, Q-Tip, and Pete Rock his entire career. Its why Jay gave Kanye and Just Blaze a shot, why Common moved on from No I.D. for a time, and so on and so forth. Artists want to try their hand at new sounds and subject matter. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.

Part of it is ego and part of it is financial. Artists ain't trying to hear that their success or even part of it is due their producer. They believe it's their talent so they move away to show that they are the reason for their success. Also the financial aspect in that now they are a much bigger name they can make bigger demands. So say the deal is 75/25 split towards JD. Well next album Usher would want a 50/50 split at minimum. JD may not want to come down off his rate so Usher moves to a lesser known producer who is willing to let him keep a much bigger split.

A good example was Boyz II Men. There wasn't big money to be made off pure album sales back then. The biggest money was in having publishing. So even though they had smash hits with Babyface writing all the big hits he was likely seeing a bigger portion of the money off those hits. So after II they came back wanting some of that writing money so decided to take a bigger hand in producing and writing to get a bigger cut of the overall money being generated.

Facts

 

[JustCKing]

It was never that Usher stopped working with JD. People don't read credits and assume JD produced the bulk of Confessions, and he didn't. He produced like five songs on that album. Three if them were #1 singles, so people kind of assumed he did the majority of the album. The biggest song on the album, "Yeah" was produced by Lil Jon. People forget that the song leaked and took a life of its own so much so that Usher released the album early.