Confessions (Expanded Edition)

the take

I'm not completely exaggerating when I say this album was like the musical atomic bomb in R&B when this was first released. (Source: I lived it, so trust me, bro.) Shoot, even 20 years later, this still musically sounds as fresh as it did back then. Once you've already started the album with a certified classic banger that's "Yeah!", you pretty much got one with that alone. I'm not going to go into detail about how I feel about the song, mainly because everyone else who loves it probably already said what I would say and am probably thinking, but just know soon as I hear "Peace up, A-town down" I start hitting the two-step. While no other track on here doesn't come too close to the classic (on the original edition of the album, at least), everything up to "Can U Handle It?" is just magnificent in the grand scheme of things. It's incredibly difficult to maintain such consistency for that span through so many tracks, but with other singles like "Confessions Part II", "Burn" (shout out to "The Boondocks" lmao), and the underrated "Caught Up", as well as deep cuts like "Superstar", "That's What It's Made For", and "Confessions (Interlude)" (I lowkey prefer the interlude version than the full song, but I digress), I suppose it isn't so difficult to accomplish after all. What ruins the streak is the song "Do It to Me". Correct me if I'm wrong, but the song is either a cover of a Prince song or USHER channeling his inner Prince with an original song. (I suppose the former and part of the latter can both be true at the same time.) Either way, it broke the streak and the song is just barely good to me; nothing too spectacular for me. Because of that, the closing two tracks aren't as memorable to me, yet still pretty damn good at the same time. For an album called "Confessions", there really isn't much that USHER really confessed to. Regardless, this monumental album that still holds up well today, both within USHER's discography and 21st century R&B as a whole.