It was like, ‘What do I do to take his sound up?’ So it wasn’t really anything about making the beat harder. I was trying to not water down the entire project. "I did 'Burn' with the mentality of trying to recreate what people felt in 'U Got It Bad.' So we did that first and “Burn,” with the guitars at the end, it was very much R&B but it was really pop. Jermaine Dupri: "I did 'Burn' before I even did 'Confessions.' 'Burn' was me trying to make an extension of what I already did with 'U Got It Bad.' I was like, ‘OK I got to make another record like “U Got It Bad” because the obsession with “U Got It Bad” was crazy.’ I heard her do an interview one day and she was talking about it like we wrote about her. She started believing that these songs were about her. It was so mysterious that Chilli actually started believing it. And even though 'Part II' was my story, it still was mysterious for him because if you got a girlfriend and you tell her you got a girl on the side who’s got a baby, it creates this mystique. "I think loved it because it was mysterious. I wanted to make 'Part II' a little bit harder, what I do when I do my remixes. I’m thinking we gotta make a remix, so I try to make the beat harder than the first version because the first version was like piano-ish and super R&B. wasn’t going to put 'Part I' on the album. So it like 30 minutes to write 'Part II.' I didn’t know that L.A. OK, well, this is very right now I can tell you exactly what 'Part II' is. I just had gone through 'Part II' in real life, so it was like as soon as he said he wanted 'Part II,' the chorus was already on the edge of my lips. 'Part II' was all me, my whole life story, basically. "Once again, 'Part II' was supposed to be fantasy: Usher didn’t have kids none of these things were going on. 'Part I' was a story that you got caught up in, so it was like we gotta have a “Part II.” So it was like 'Confessions' just stuck-this is what it is. He already had 'Caught Up,' he already had a couple other songs that went along with this. We felt like we had tapped into something. "Once we got done with that song, we thought, ‘How cool was it that he confesses bad things, as opposed to lying about it?’ That’s the opposite of what males do. Those are the guys that garner these covers. The media only cares about those that are doing dirt, doing crazy shit. He had hit records but he wasn’t really in the media. When we first started making this album, Usher was considered a clean artist. The name of the song was 'All Bad,' with 'Confessions' in parentheses.
Jermaine Dupri: "'Part I' was basically the beginning of how we even got to Confessions. On the eve of the 10th anniversary of Confessions Complex spoke to Jermaine Dupri about how the titular song came to be, the genesis of the album’s theme, and why, if he had his way, “Yeah!” wouldn’t have happened. Both were the cornerstones of the Diamond-selling album. Songs like “Burn” and “Confessions Part II,” both written and produced by Jermaine Durpri and Bryan-Michael Cox, fanned the flames. Questions arose: Was Usher planning on breaking up with Chilli? Did Usher really get his sidepiece pregnant? But at the time, with Usher in a very public relationship with Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas of TLC fame, the album became pop culture catnip. When taken by itself, it’s an unremarkable story arc. It boils down to a man taking ownership of the wrongs he’s committed in a relationship one who’s done so much dirt he can’t pull himself out of his grave. Like most R&B records, Confessions is about love and love lost. Hits aside, the true hallmark of the album was its titular theme, as reflected in the title track. 1 hit “U Got It Bad” and moved more than 8 million units worldwide. It’s also worth mentioning that Confessions was the hotly anticipated follow-up to 8701, the album that birthed the No.
The second single from the album, “Burn,” a somber guitar-backed meditation on ending a bad relationship, replaced “Yeah!” at the top of the charts and remained there for another eight consecutive weeks. 1 song in the country for twelve consecutive weeks and sold over 4 million copies in the United States. The success of the album can be attributed to a great number of factors: The first single, the Lil Jon–produced “Yeah!” was the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 for nine consecutive weeks. It was the second best-selling album of the 2000s. Numbers don’t lie: The album sold over 20 million records worldwide. To say Usher’s Confessions was the most important album of the aughts is neither hyperbole nor unfounded fanboy-ism. The words “classic,” “watershed,” and “most influential” are tossed around without care or clear aim. When our favorite albums hit milestone anniversaries, the hyperbole comes out when describing the art, as well as the impact the project had on its genre. Everytime i was in L.A.Ten years later, the truth finally comes out.
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