I didn’t want people to feel like we were chasing that because Usher, once again, wasn’t an artist that had to follow the trends of what was going on. But to be ratchet wasn’t the coolest thing in the world at that point yet. Being turnt-up and crunk, it was cool for Lil Jon, it was cool for the YoungBloodZ, it was cool for Dem Franchize Boyz, and those people that do it. But at the same time, I recognized it as a hit record.īy the way, at that time, crunk wasn’t cool yet.

I was scared of the ratchetness ”As the executive producer and producer, I’m locked into the theme of what we’re trying to make.

When they came out with ‘Yeah!,’ I was nervous because I was thinking, ‘Here we are with this guy’s career, having great R&B songs, and now he’s about to do something that could potentially damage what we already created.’ On not wanting “Yeah!” to make the album: Those are the guys that garner these covers. The media only cares about those that are doing dirt, doing crazy sh*t. 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. Part I’ was basically the beginning of how we even got to Confessions. On Usher’s image being too “clean” to be considered a superstar: And from that point on I started watching Usher’s life closely. So, that conversation was the beginning of my head wrapping around, ‘How do I create a whirlwind around Usher and make Usher something to talk about? Make people want to go deeper into the person. People talk about your songs but they don’t really know Usher the artist.’” was saying to him, “Usher, all people talk about with you are your songs now. But we was getting a lot of resistance and even L.A. I couldn’t believe this, because we just came off “U Got It Bad,” and a bunch of big records and we felt like it was his time to turn into that superstar. When we were talking about Usher’s new album, the PR people at Arista were saying they’re not getting a lot of bites for Usher to shoot covers. JD spoke in detail about how the album came into play, Chilli’s reaction to it all, his personal connection to the songs and even revisited the million dollar topic of who the title track was really about. Jermaine Dupri Speaks On The Meaning Behind Usher’s “Confessions”Ģ014 marks the 10-year anniversary of the release of Usher’s “Confessions” album and Complex recently caught up with ATL super-producer Jermaine Dupri to take a stroll down memory lane. JD talks that talk in celebration of the “Confessions” 10-year anniversary.

Listen to usher confessions album