Usher and Zaytoven - "A"

Usher and Zaytoven
"A"
2018
Spotify

"A" is the new collaborative project from Atlanta producer Zaytoven and one of the cities most famous artists Usher. The album in one part is a love letter to Atlanta, but on the other it's really just another Usher album with Zaytoven producing the whole thing. Trap producers as of late have been doing more than just dropping their names at the beginning of tracks, pushing for a bigger stake on the projects they participate in. This tends to give albums like this a singular voice, but in hip hop that isn't always a good thing. On "A" Usher does little to change his hyper sexualized style, almost doubling down on the "party" aspect of his lifestyle. It feels like Usher saying trappy things but with his silky smooth vocal, which feels more than a bit odd. It wouldn't be an album that is even slightly Atlanta related without Future featuring on a track, and you don;t even need to get through the first one before He makes an appearance. It's lackluster just like everything Future has done for the past few years. His mumbled style is so out of touch and the fact that He only uses one vocal effect, on every single song is so damn played out. Every song here is so similar to the shit Usher has always done that it's often painful to listen too. "Birthday" is one of the biggest offenders where He just repeats what you should do on your "birthday". The repetition is a hallmark of trap, but Usher singing the same thing over and over and over is frustrating as all hell, especially when the lyrics are this fucking stupid.

There are times wwhere Usher doesn't feel constrained by the normal tropes of R&B that He has been singing for years, but with that freedom comes a lack of structure and a reliance on the beat rather than his vocal and words. The writing here is just kinda bad, like the first passes at a song were what they went with. It's an issue with trap where people just put out music and hope it sticks without much in terms of editing. It's how someone like Young Thug becomes so prolific, if He recorded it it's coming out somehow. That doesn't mean it is all good, and most of it feels disposable as hell. Ushe's biggest hits "Yeah" and others have been a departure for him, stretching his creativity into something new, but this album just ticks the same old boxes. Zaytoven's beats aren't enough to save the record alone. "Say What U Want" is the one time it all comes together, the disjointed keyboard line, the trap drum skitter and Usher singing wonderfully all work on the track. but that is it, everything else feels silly and disposable, absent from any of the things that make Usher so endearing in the first place. "A" ends up being a bit of a bore.

5.0 out of 10