Following the headlining of his own residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas,Nevada and numerous renewals ever since,Usher started gearing up for an upcoming album release in mid-2023. In July,the singer teamed up with French cognac producer Rémy Martin in a campaign titled "Life Is a Melody".[7] An accompanying advertisement previewed an unreleased song called "Coming Home",a first hint at the title of his upcoming album.[8] The track 'Risk It All' with H.E.R. was featured on the soundtrack to The Color Purple musical remake. The album's title references Raymond's promotion of the African-American culture within the state of Georgia and the city of Atlanta,specifically.
On September 24,2023,it was announced that Usher would be the headliner of the Super Bowl LVIII halftime show,a self-described "honor of a lifetime".[9] The event took place at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. He promised a show "unlike anything else they've seen" from him before.[10] The musician announced the accompanying album to be released the same day,February 11,2024;the release date was later changed to February 9. It includes the single "Good Good" with Summer Walker and 21 Savage.[11] Usher stated that he and his team put a lot of creativity and effort into the record,in order "to tell a story that is open to interpretation" and is intended to connect with people.[12]Coming Home is Raymond's first independent album,and supported by the tour Usher:Past Present Future (2024–2025).[13][14][15]
Coming Home received generally favorable reviews from critics. At Metacritic,which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics,the album has an average score of 76 based on nine reviews.[17]Jon Pareles,writing for The New York Times,remarked that the album had the singer return in "familiar guises." He found that Coming Home "sums up and expands what Usher does best," further noting that the "personas are familiar,and so is Usher's musical universe,with the supple physicality of his vocals floating in electronic soundscapes. But he still comes up with ingenious variations on his longtime subjects."[25] In her review for Rolling Stone,Brittany Spanos wrote that Coming Home was "appropriately titled:the star's sprawling,twenty-song LP is nostalgic and familiar as Usher leans into the past without making it feel stale [...] The album is a reminder that he is pretty great at a lot of things. Glad he came home."[26]
Neil McCormick from The Daily Telegraph called Coming Home a "cheesy but exuberant comeback album" as well as a hugely impressive reminder of Usher's pop skills,and another testament to the enduring appeal of high class R&B." He concluded:"It might even be the best of his career,if you can overlook the fact that at 20 tracks long it's a bit bloated."[24]Pitchfork's Julianne Escobedo Shepherd wrote that Usher "remains most comfortable and effective playing the sensual lover with come-hither abs,where even the most blatant sexual metaphor doesn't come off as seamy" and he "maintains the versatility he's established through the years" on the album.[22] Chuck Arnold from the New York Post described the album as a "refreshing return to real R&B" and found that Usher "hasn't lost any of his powers of seduction."[27]AllMusic editor Andy Kellman noted that "like all of Usher's earlier post-millennial LPs,Coming Home is long and pieced together." He found that "Usher is in his element,at his most charming" throughout the album.[18]
HipHopDX's Alex Siegel wrote that while the album was not "a completely smooth return to form," it felt "liberated from post-Confessions expectations and the gravity of current trends. This helps explain why the album is an at-times schizophrenic hodgepodge of sounds and styles."[20]Clash critic Shahzaib Hussain remarked that "there's narrative cohesion,yes,but a leaner structure,and more daring in construction would have been welcomed. Still,Coming Home,in the context of a seasoned entertainer experiencing a career Renaissance,gives adoring fans a sprinkling of every musical touchstone in the R&B canon."[19]Slant Magazine critic Paul Attard found that the "album feels less driven by creative ingenuity or an aesthetic vision than by sheer showmanship" and noted that some material on it "could have used some extra polish to reach its fullest potential."[23]The Independent's Helen Brown called the album a collection of "cheesy seduction songs" and further commented:"Lyrical foreplay isn't exactly the singer's strong suit on this throwback album full of percussive panting."[21] Less impressed,Mark Richardson from The Wall Street Journal called Coming Home "decidedly uneven,with a handful of awkward moments and dull patches."[28]
Commercial performance
In the United States,the album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200,earning 91,000 album-equivalent units,calculated from 45.82 million on-demand streams and 53,000 pure album copies. Coming Home marks Usher's ninth top 10-charting album on the Billboard 200.[29] The album marked the second highest debut of the week and was the best-selling album of the week,with 53,000 units sold:47,500 digital sales and physical sales of 5,500 (4,000 on CD and 1,500 on vinyl). Its debut marked the largest first-week sales for an R&B album in more than four years,since Lionel Richie's 2019 live album Hello From Las Vegas sold 65,000 copies in its opening week.[30]Coming Home marked Usher's fifth number-one album on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart,having previously topped the chart with Looking 4 Myself (2012),Raymond v. Raymond (2010),Here I Stand (2008),and Confessions (2004).[30]
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