THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

982-Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris-Yeah!

2004-Number 1 single.

Best Bit-At 0.01. Here’s the dilemma, Usher is so irresistible to women, so much so that they are throwing themselves at him. The poor chap has to decide whether to cheat on his girlfriend, or walk away.

In the wonderful world of ‘Pop Music’ there are countless different genres of music, with the official genre name for this song being ‘Crunk&B,’ ‘Crunk’ is a sub genre of ‘Hip-Hop’ music that is used to describe ‘Hip-Hop’ music that comes out of the South coast of America, especially in Atlanta, New Orleans, and Miami. It’s main components are keyboard synths, drum machine, heavy bass-lines, and shouted vocals, in a call and response manner. The genre emerged in the early 1990’s, and gained mainstream success in the early 2000’s, thanks in main to one of this songs co-writers Lil Jon, (see also best songs 943) who coined the phrase ‘Crunk&B,’ as this song mixes ‘Crunk’ with ‘R&B,’ the genre that Usher is most associated with.

Usher Raymond 1V was born on October 14th, 1978, in Dallas, Texas, United States, with sales in excess of 75 million records he is one of the best selling ‘R&B’ artists of all time. The discography of Usher includes eight studio Albums released between 1994-2016, and 79 singles issued between 1993-2022. In America on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, he has appeared on 35 top 40 hits as either the lead artist or the featured artist, with all nine of his Billboard Number 1’s being as the lead artist. In the UK he has scored 22 top 40 singles as the lead artist, and a further five as the featured artist, and has achieved four UK Number 1 hits, all as the lead artist. In 2004 Usher spent 20 consecutive weeks at Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 when ‘Yeah!’ topped the chart for 12 weeks, only to be dislodged by his follow up single ‘Burn,’ which spent a further eight weeks atop the chart.

‘Yeah!’ was the first of five singles released from Usher’s fourth studio Album ‘Confessions’ from March 2004, it was produced by Lil Jon, (Jonathan Smith) who is also one of the songs six co-writers, along with Ludacris, (Christopher Bridges) who provides the ‘Rap’ on the track, LRoc, (James Phillips) LaMarquis Jefferson, J. Que, (Patrick Smith) and Sean Garrett. (Garrett Hamler) All six of the songwriters had worked previously, and would do so again many times, with several other artists in the R&B genre.

Although all were happy with the quality of the ‘Confessions’ Album, the record company felt that it still needed a ‘big’ single to get it launched, Sean Garrett has said,’I knew that Usher was almost finished with his album. LA Reid called me and said, ‘We need a first single.’ We spoke a little bit about it, and I went to the studio. Since all the other songs on the album were very hot and ‘R&B’-ish, I wanted to give him something out of the box that was more creative and dynamic. So we went in and cut a demo and took it to LA, and we sat and talked about it for quite a while. He thought it was very interesting, but he asked me a lot of questions in reference to how it worked for Usher, and said he wanted a change or two. So I went in, and the rest is history, and the beginning of this beautiful run.’

‘Yeah!’ and it’s parent Album ‘Confessions’ represent the peak of Usher’s career, with ‘Yeah!’ selling over four million copies in America, and topping the charts in 12 different countries during 2004. The Album ‘Confessions’can boast an even greater achievement in that it has sold in excess of 15 million copies worldwide, and with sales at 10.3 million in the States, it is the second-best selling album of the 2000’s decade in America, behind the ‘NSYNC’ Album ‘No Strings Attached,’ from 2000. And finally for those who always wondered what the opening shout of ‘Peace up, A-town down’ means. Well according to the urban dictionary, it means to flash the hand signal for peace, which is the two fingers raised up, but instead you point them down giving the shape of ‘A.’

‘Up in the club with my homies, trying to get a lil’ V-I, keep it down on the low-key, you should know how it feels. I saw this shorty, she was checking up on me, from the game she was spitting in my ear. You would think that she know me.’