walking upstream…
Usher
sourcesThe Hollywood Reporter — Usher on Michael Jackson's advice (personal encounter quote) · Andscape — Bobby Brown on "Don't Be Cruel" as a blueprint for Usher's generation · Complex — Usher on 25 years of "My Way" and Babyface/Dupri's roles in its production · Babyface (X/Twitter) — statement presenting Usher's 2024 BET Lifetime Achievement Award · WBSS Media artist bio — Usher's early biography and stated influences (Sinatra, 8701, Bobby Brown) · Wikipedia — Usher (musician), lead + early-career citations
Usher Terry Raymond IV was born in Dallas in 1978 and grew up singing in a Chattanooga church before his mother relocated the family to Atlanta to chase his talent. At thirteen, a connection through Bobby Brown's inner circle put him onstage in talent shows and parking lots; within a year he'd won Star Search and signed to LaFace Records, the label Babyface and L.A. Reid had just built. Michael Jackson was the artist Usher measured everything against — the dancing, the reinvention, the refusal to stand still between albums. Usher spent the late nineties absorbing LaFace's smooth, hip-hop-inflected sound on My Way (1997), then broke wide with 8701 (2001) and the multi-platinum Confessions (2004): a teenager who studied his elders' footwork became the artist a new generation studied instead.
the sound in question
2004
Yeah!Usher
walk the tributaries ↓
Michael Jackson1980s · Pop / R&B / Funk
Usher didn't just watch Michael Jackson's videos — he shared a stage with him, and the compliment Jackson paid back is the one Usher still repeats: "It was an admiration of what I do as an entertainer that he offered me... he appreciated the fact that I'm a song-and-dance man and the fact that that's not an easy thing to do," Usher told the Hollywood Reporter. That validation from music's most exacting perfectionist reshaped how Usher approached every stage show afterward — dance and voice treated as a single, inseparable instrument.
listen: upstream & heresource: MTV News — "Usher ↗
1982
Billie JeanMichael Jackson
2001
U Remind MeUsher
listen forPlay "Billie Jean" then "U Remind Me" back to back: both ride a spare, bass-forward groove that leaves room for the voice to do the choreography — Jackson's clipped, percussive "hee" and "ooh" ad-libs answering the bassline, Usher's falsetto runs doing the same call-and-response over a nearly identical four-on-the-floor pulse. It's the sound of two men who learned a groove this tight doesn't need much decoration to move a room.
Bobby Brown1980s-90s · New jack swing / R&B / Pop
The first record twelve-year-old Usher ever bought with his own money was Bobby Brown's "Don't Be Cruel" — "I admired him just for being an edgy artist, being a true representative of R&B and rhythmic music," he later said. The debt wasn't only musical: a member of Brown's security team spotted Usher at an Atlanta talent show and started bringing him to Brown's shows and studio sessions. "I had a security guard who found Usher... I've known Usher since he was 12," Brown told Vibe, "it makes me feel great because he's a great entertainer."
listen: upstream & heresource: Vibe — Bobby Brown on discovering and mentoring young Usher ↗
1988
Don't Be CruelBobby Brown
1997
You Make Me Wanna...Usher
listen forCue Brown's "Don't Be Cruel" against Usher's breakout "You Make Me Wanna...": both ride a stuttering, syncopated new jack swing drum pattern under a smooth, melodic vocal, and both singers clip their phrasing to sit just behind the snare rather than float over it. Usher's teenage voice doesn't yet have Brown's grit, but the rhythmic attitude — R&B smoothness sung with hip-hop's swagger — is a direct inheritance from the record he bought as a kid.
Babyface1990s · R&B / Soul / New jack swing
Babyface signed Usher to LaFace at fourteen and built him a whole album before an executive feud sank it: "He got mad... and he built an entire album for me, and he gave the whole album to somebody else — Tevin Campbell! 'Can We Talk'... was my song," Usher recalled on Questlove Supreme. They rebuilt the relationship anyway — Babyface produced select tracks and mentored him through 1997's My Way — and by 2024 the two stood together at the BET Awards, Babyface calling it "a beautiful thing" to see it "come full circle."
listen: upstream & heresource: BlackAmericaWeb — recap of Usher's Questlove Supreme story on Babyface and LaFace ↗
1990
Whip AppealBabyface
1997
Nice & SlowUsher
listen forPlay Babyface's own "Whip Appeal" against Usher's "Nice & Slow": both ease into a mid-tempo swingbeat groove built for close-quarters seduction rather than the dance floor — a hushed, conversational vocal riding just behind a lean drum-machine pocket, with space left between the hits instead of filling it. That patient, whispered-come-on production style is the LaFace house sound Babyface built and signed Usher to inherit.