Usher sat down with Sony Music Entertainment to talk about the history of his seductive and excellent sophomore album in honor of My Way’s 25th anniversary and the release of the revamped songs. A lyric and photo booklet is included in the package, along with three reworked songs and new album art that respects the original cover from 1997. The album cemented its place in musical history in 1997 by ranking eleventh on US Billboard’s Top 200 Albums of the Year chart.Įarly in 2023, Vinyl Me Please will offer the 25th-anniversary deluxe version of My Way on 2LP 180g Silver Cloudy Vinyl. We've done a couple of albums so far for our greatest R&B albums of the 2000s series, but there was absolutely no way possible that we could avoid this album.LaFace Records released Usher’s My Way on September 16, 1997, has earned triple platinum for the singles “You Make Me Wanna” and “Nice & Slow” and has been certified seven times platinum by the RIAA. It is the single greatest R&B album of the 2000s and truthfully it might be in the running for the greatest R&B album ever, or at least in the top 10-15. From the moment this album released to massive first week sales of 1.096 million copies, Usher affirmed himself as a legend forever with this album. It would be the largest first week sales for a R&B artist and Usher would join a small club of artists who have sold 1 million copies in the first week. The album is one of the very few albums to be certified diamond in the 2000s, and remains the 2nd highest selling album of the entire decade.

On top of selling 10 million in the US, the album would sell almost 20 million copies worldwide, making it a landmark moment not only in Usher's career, but in music period. The album itself starts off with a somber yet optimistic intro, as Usher welcomes us to this experience and leads us right into the first single, the Lil Jon produced and featured 'Yeah!', which also continues the chemistry of Ludacris and Usher, as Luda drops a solid catchy verse on this song as well. This song is what I have always felt sold the album mostly, as it was such a massive hit and everywhere. Usher would take the Crunk craze, mix it with his R&B sensibility, and blend the genres together with a standard and slightly generic yet catchy Lil Jon beat, a simple call and response style hook, and the magic just flowed together perfectly. While I consider this album a classic, I'll be the first to admit I have a few songs that just don't hit the mark for me, and while I like the production, 'Caught Up' has a tendency to fall short when compared to some of the other songs. It's still catchy and enjoyable, but if I feel the need to skip a song or two on this album, this is likely one of them. The lyrics here sound like 2004, or in reality, 1998, as Usher sings 'my homies say, this girl is cramping my style', which makes the song sound a bit more dated than it was, but regardless, when these lyrics are delivered by Usher, you just sit back and sing along, no matter how silly it sounds. When we reach the interlude for 'Superstar', it's almost as if we've gotten all the filler out of the way, because the album is simply flawless from here on. That's the strange part about this album.

The singles were perfectly fit into the story of the album, but they still felt like filler.

Usher confessions 2 tracklist