Usher: Confessions

In 2004, Usher wasn’t yet committed to the idea of marriage, a point he made repeatedly during the press cycle for his fourth album, Confessions, marketed as his most personal project to date. In interviews, he told the same story about his breakup with TLC’s Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, seven years his senior: He’d cheated on her; she’d been pressuring him to settle down; arguments led to fissures, and they eventually split. Chilli hinted at infidelity on the radio but declined to elaborate on the relationship to Vibe or contribute to what she called a “PR move.” Usher said he didn’t view the album as a stunt, even though it was. He described Confessions as autofiction and let the public run with the rumors, which, of course, they did.

But the deception worked on multiple levels. In constructing the narrative around Confessions, Usher omitted certain facts. While it was true that he wasn’t entirely sold on marriage, he told Rolling Stone in 2004 that he did once buy Chilli a 10-karat diamond ring and proposed to her in the most R&B way: in the middle of sex. He said he co-wrote the album’s core breakup ballad, “Burn,” while he and Chilli were still together. A decade later, executive producer Jermaine Dupri said the song was indeed about her but admitted Confessions wasn’t just Usher’s experience, rather a compilation of its male creators’ infractions, promoted as one man’s expunging of sins. The album’s most salacious track, “Confessions Pt. II,” a saga about creeping and getting another woman pregnant, was based on Dupri’s life, not Usher’s. “We wanted the media to ask us questions,” the producer told Vibe in 2014, comparing their artistic license to that of Michael Jackson. “Nobody knows who the fuck Billie Jean is. We’re still looking for her.”

Usher understood that much of a great pop album is simply telling a good story. He had the catalog, choreography, angelic falsetto, and winning grin necessary to be a star. Everyone in America knew the term “Yeah!” not just as an everyday affirmation but as a club smash. But to be worthy of the Michael Jackson-level prestige he coveted, Usher needed a man-in-the-mirror moment. He played up the cheating angle and the rumors and was seemingly forthright about the subject of his ex; and because it worked, he copied that storytelling formula for his subsequent album releases, albeit with less moving results: For 2008’s Here I Stand, he milked his marriage to Tameka Foster for material, and then he made their divorce fodder for his 2010 album Raymond v. Raymond. The ability to draft a persuasive narrative around a project is a skill music fans both scrutinize and take for granted, but the greatest pop stars—Janet Jackson, Taylor Swift, Drake—know how to master the art of packaging. It’s a craft to turn reality into convenient truth, and it’s special when the material transcends the machine. On Confessions, the stars align in Usher’s favor: He had a breakup to cope with and an album to make, and the dramatic backdrop gave him the most compelling work of his career.