We’ve got used to seeing R&B singers in command of their tracks – the beats and music arranging themselves around a star’s performance, discreetly ensuring the best possible setting for their voice. That’s especially been the case for male R&B performers, whose silky confidence or swagger generally gets a performance-enhancing shot from the producers.
“Yeah!” gives us something different. The production here dominates and intoxicates – that repeating pair of 4-note figures played on synths loud enough to be bullhorns; the slow hammer of the beat and whomp of the bass; the shouts of Lil Jon in his hypeman role. This is crunk’n’B, a hard, deep, minimal sound built for the club and built to turn any space where it’s played loud enough into the club. And on the floor of the club, stardom always has to be earned.
It’s not that Usher sounds overwhelmed or even vulnerable in this setting, but he’s not in charge of it. His light, boyish singing style has to prove it works here, which makes “Yeah!” an instant standout in a catalogue so far marked by a sort of effortless presumption of heat. Here he sounds sexier than ever because we’re hearing him work a little, adapt to the production and manage to create a throughline of smoothness in this arena of beats and sweat.
Even so he can only manage half the song. The last verse is taken care of by Ludacris, who at this point seemed to be guesting on a song a week, and why not? He provided excellent value. Ludacris’ rubbery, rapid-paced drawl was a perfect voice for guest verses, like Nicki Minaj later on: someone weird and skilful enough to add spice to a track even if you only gave them a few bars to play with.
But here Lil Jon’s beat makes Luda seem less like a weirdo popping his head round the studio door and more like an old hand, a native of the booming, bumping environment who’s showing his country cousin around. He fits “Yeah!”’s beat better than its actual star, which paradoxically makes his verse less memorable – the joy of this song is the way its smooth frontman and dirty backing don’t quite mesh, and the way we get to hear the negotiations between them play out on record.
Score: 8
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No!
(I may have made the same “joke” when this came up on Stereogum).
I loathe this song. It stirs up memories of crappy uni nights out in crappy nightclubs where the opening synths of this song would go off like a damn fire alarm, everyone in the club would go nuts and I’d just groan. Quite categorically not for me, I guess.
In its defence, it’s more energetic than the average Usher song, but it just irritates the hell out of me.
3/10.
Had crunk ever had any mainstream success in the UK before this? I’ve read Lil Jon’s Get Low was apparently the first to make inroads in the States but it did not chart here until 2005. In these terms perhaps ‘Yeah’ can be compared to ‘Slow’ – a superstar catching ear of a minimalistic, underground sound and lugging it to number one (crunk and especially hyphy and snap seem to be the backbone for some of the more fascinatingly, musically minimal hits of the mid-00s).
Except ‘Yeah’ only deals in reduction musically. Vocally it has everything going for it as one of the ebullient hits of its era. I naturally want to connect it to music I understand better – the synths as marooned trance pads, those swoops of punishing low-end (especially in the chorus) a legacy from Miami techno-bass and D.J. Magic Mike. But the stars on ‘Yeah’ crowd all of its spaces, emphasising its staccato fire and making it more hectic and a little hypnotically ‘off’. As far as I can tell, Usher never did anything else much like this. But it works so undeniably here – a stylistic detour that is so complete in and of itself and ends up its creator’s most famous song. 8.
An appealing slice of ‘Crunk&B’ imho (not a sentence I felt I would ever write, having only heard of the genre very recently!) I’m pleased by Tom’s 8, but I will opt for a 7/10 here. You don’t need to be crazy and/or drunk to enjoy this one, but it might help!
Is this the first double UK/US number one that Tom B.’s gotten to before Tom E.? S’mildly amusing if so.
For those at home keeping score: https://www.stereogum.com/2206833/the-number-ones-ushers-yeah-feat-lil-jon-ludacris/columns/the-number-ones/
Anyway, this song’s a jam and all that but, being a child during the heyday of crunk and coming of age when trap was king, I can’t say I’m AS attached to it as other people are. My favorite track off Confessions is actually “Burn.” I love how simmering it is. This song is probably a 7 for me.
#1: You did, Tinker! I only know this because I checked the entry to reference my comment and saw yours.
#4. I think you’re right. Should be a couple more of those.
Yeah! This one just works. As an introvert, I really feel a lot of the lyrics. The whole updated “Billie Jean” vibe is the glue of the piece augmented nicely by mega-hypeman Lil Jon and a genuinely fun verse by Ludacris. Absolute 10.
To play the irritating Yin to #1’s retreating Yang I loved everything about this as a typical clubbing uni student, and as Tom alluded to it’s mostly Usher that makes it so.. His silky smooth default mode did absolutely nothing for me but
here strains so hard against the busiest minimalist production it’s possible to have that you’re fully rooting for him by the end.
Would have been a certified 20 back then but for now an 8 feels about right
I’ve not long written about Usher’s previous number one, “You Make Me Wanna”, on my own blog, as I’m currently doing a series this year focussing week by week on the charts from 1998. That single, in hindsight, was definitely laying down the foundations for what was to come with his imperial phase and success, which “Yeah!” was undoubtedly the start of.
However, unlike that first number one, or “Pop Ya Collar”, both of which were brilliant records, I wasn’t really so keen on him from this point onwards. It was just a bit repetitive and generic to my ears compared to what he’d done before. But this being a number one, and a two weeker at that, indicates I was in the minority. 3 for me also this one.
No #2 watches on this, but there are a couple of records that charted whilst this was at the top worth mentioning here: in its first week, N*E*R*D had their biggest hit with the excellent “She Wants To Move” reaching #5. My work experience gave me a Virgin Megastores voucher as a thank you present after my three weeks with them was up, and I bought the ‘Fly or Die’ album that single was from, along with Jamie Cullum’s ‘Twentysomething’ and Amy Winehouse’s ‘Frank’.
Entering at #3 in it’s second week – and then spending eleven weeks in the top 10, was Anastacia with “Left Outside Alone”, a rip roaring power pop ballad that sold more copies than all but six of the year’s actual bunnies. It was her first single after being treated for breast cancer, co-written and produced by Dallas Austin and Glen Ballard, and arguably became the song she’s most known for.
The first crunk number one, of a sort, that unholy mixture of dessicated electronic refrains and frat boy towel flicking which in general is hip hop’s equivalent of the Macc Lads jamming with Gary Numan. At its best – for instance, on the 2007 compilation Hyphy Hitz – it’s miraculous futurist pub fun; who wouldn’t back Keak Da Sneak (and his Farm Boys) over the Kooks? With the likes of Mississippi’s David Banner it’s a schizophrenic mongrel of justified soul rage and burp bleurgh Men Only underpants. With the likes of Ludacris I pine for the old days of sixties stereo separation where you could turn the music up on one channel and fade out the vocals dribbling from the other.
“Yeah” is musically a stunning, stunning record which once awakened me under World Service headphones at 2 am on a Sunday – and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t still dreaming when the song had ended. Thrillingly and alienatingly produced by Li’l Jon, the soundtrack very well balanced by Usher’s obviously heartfelt dilemmas on cavernous, anonymous dancefloors, but sadly pulled out of the 8/9 bracket by the ludicrous rapper with his Benny Hill-verging-on-Taliban outlook apropos the opposite sex (“If you hold the head steady I’m-a milk the cow” is one of the milder examples of his discourse). If only Li’l Jon had had the courage to put Usher and only Usher on the record; Ludacris, alas, makes “Yeah” less crunk, more skunk.
L.A. Reid sent Usher to Lil Jon to concoct this. I can see how the Eurodance or jock-jam production would add a big demographic to a typical male solo singer of adult R&B songs like “Confessions Part II”. Presumably it worked; “Yeah!” was a three-month bestseller and we’ll see him again here soon. For now, suffice it to say that only one artist yet to come in the intervening twenty years has sold significantly more copies of an album than “Confessions”, and I think the added audience from Lil Jon’s additions were indispensable to that.
There’s also a lyric in the song, of course; Lil Jon’s lines are perfectly executed, Usher’s are a basic club narrative, so low in the mix that they don’t impress on you if you don’t want them to (as noted by Tom), and finally there is the cringeworthy stanza from Ludacris that seals the record in my mind as “one for the boys”.
Pub quiz question – what connects Lil Jon to the Oscar nominations from last week?
This is one of those records you remember more for what you associate it with (in my case sticky dance floors, VK blue and clumsily trying to impress a straight guy I fancied) than any wider impression it made. It was one of the year’s bigger singles but a glance at the top tens for the two weeks it held the top suggest there wasn’t much else of interest around.
2/10. Not my thing.
Back in 2004 everything sounded like this (or so it seemed to me at the time). I grew extremely sick of it. I was starving for chords and melodies and songwriting, and now every song seemed to be a fleshless skeleton, built out of beats and loops.
And it’s better when songs have a voice, a perspective, or SOMETHING that’s their own. “Ice Ice Baby” has some of the worst lyrics ever written, but it’s unique. Whatever “Flow like a harpoon, daily and nightly” might mean, you cannot mistake that song for any other.
But here? We’re up in the club (again), the homies are here (again), we’re on the floor (again), shawty’s gettin’ down low (again), etc. At least fifty chart hits from 2003-2007 appear to have been constructed from the same lyric sheet.
“Yeah” feels made out of prefab parts. The crunk beat could have been swapped out for a different one, and it wouldn’t have affected the song. Likewise, the lead vocal could be Akon or Chris Brown, and Ludacris could be T-Pain or Fiddy. Maybe a more cultured ear would hear more. To me, nothing in the song really matters: it’s Frankenstein parts all the way down.
But it sounds great, and provides a masterclass in how to write a certain kind of music.
The hook is God. Lead with the hook. Repeat it often, so that if someone walks out of the bathroom midway through, they get the hook too. Don’t worry about developing or evolving the song: everyone’s too drunk to care, and the DJ’s just going to beatmatch it into “In da Club” in a few minutes anyway.
Also, make sure it works as a ringtone. “Yeah” is nearly the epitome of ringtone rap. To me it’s natural home isn’t even on a club PA: it’s tinnily blasting out of some 12 year old’s Motorola RAZR.
After a few years of degeneration you get “Crank That (Soulja Boy)”, which was made by a literal 16 year old and doesn’t even sound that much worse.
#5 – yep I’m not very creative, clearly. It reminded me of the famous NME review of Def Leppard’s 2006 album Yeah! which simply consisted of the word “Nah”.
#6 – I expected to be in the minority (although Coagulopath at #12 articulates his dislike far better than I can). In fairness I didn’t even know what crunk was until a week or two and having listened to a playlist of it on Spotify it might be the dictionary definition of “not for me”.
Other chart notables:
– ThePenSmith at #7 mentioned Left Outside Alone, which is very good. Anastacia didn’t hang around for much longer though, just one more top 10 hit and a few minor ones before largely vanishing as a commercial force
– The Darkness’ last big hit, the power ballad Love Is Only A Feeling, made it up to #5 (that one is a 10 for me). Their 2005 sophomore album spawned a couple of modest hits but by then the bubble had burst. They are however still going and I saw them live just at the weekend, so I can confirm that they’re still tremendous fun as a live act
– Lower down, in Usher’s first week at the top a little-known Las Vegas indie band called The Killers made their debut at #28 with Somebody Told Me. Disappointingly they’re unbunnied, but that song would be a much bigger hit when re-released early in 2005.
– And someone who is bunnied (although not as much as I thought he’d be), Kanye West, made his chart debut at #9 with Through The Wire. There’ll be a few opportunities to discuss him in the future and those should be some interesting columns…
Watching the TOTP repeats that are on at the moment, they’re just getting to a point around ’94 where the RnB acts start doing that thing where instead of singing the song as you’d hear it on the radio, they play the track in the background and sort of alternate singing along to it with ad-libs and hyping up the crowd. It didn’t always work on TOTP – it certainly confused 12-year-old me – but it was probably a lot better for the audience in attendance than a copy of the track as recorded would have been. 30 years later it’s pretty much the standard way of performing RnB and often pop as well.
Anyway Yeah! sounds like one of those performances, only without having made the original track to sing over in the first place.
#1 got this right, all the way down to the “Nah!” verdict. An R&B song about banging your girlfriend’s ex-friend in a club is tailor made for not me. And there isn’t even a Need For Speed game or something to give me a way into this, like there was with Lil Jon’s contemparary East Side Boyz’ top-10 collab Get Low.
3.
Luda’s misogyny definitely marks it down for me a lot too – marks it down as firmly the kind of party I do not want any part of – but did I still at least like this song, and occasionally love it, at the time? Even though that time coincided with me realising I might possibly be queer on some level, and narrowing this down to “asexual” as I started uni a couple of years later and pointedly avoided the party venues that assuredly played this so much? Yup.
Lil Jon is truly the star here – I presume the “featuring” credit he gets is as “vocalist” for the hypeman bits on the track, but this is as production-led as any Britney song before this or any of the “producer feat. singer” credits after this, and as successful too. For me, it works the same way “Toxic” does – not that many parts to the production, but each cranked up to eleventy-stupid and strong enough to pull that off. Usher ends up productively battling that wall of sound, and if that wall of sound equates to “the club,” the lyric fits this too – he’s loving it, but he’s partly lost in it, he’s not making the first move, she is. Luda’s verse, of course, breaks this; it’s a change of energy, but lyrically in the absolute worst way. If his job is to sound like the “old hand” native to this environment, he ends up coming off like the promoter running this club’s “ladies get free drinks” promotion knowing it’s just there to get women into the club and then into a drunken state of exploitability. Thanks, I hate it.
I’m tempted to joke this is a 6 with Luda and a 9 without him. But I think 7 is the actual right mark for something with this kind of flawed brilliance, just because 6 is enough of a “default mark” to seem most suited to the generically decent, and this isn’t that. Or is it? #12 captures some of my feelings too (including and especially how I was drawn to “songwriting” in the rock sense at this point, which lured me to mid-00s indie that was at the very least a lot less fun than “Yeah!” and often a lot less good), and he’s certainly right in it being “a masterclass in how to write a certain kind of music” and that music feeling interchangeable sometimes.
Ultimately, though, this is one of those template songs that an entire strand of pop – and probably the largest one of the lot even at this point – spends the next decade-plus trying and mostly failing to recapture the magic of. So it has to get an above-average mark even if it has something to mark it down hard. 7
Does the song title have an exclamation mark or not? According to the sleeve it’s “Yeah”, but Wikipedia says it’s “Yeah!” and so does Usher’s Vevo account.
@16 I now think I was a bit judgmental, and unthinking of how this stuff actually works.
Has anyone read “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud? One of his arguments is that empty space is actually a powerful artistic tool: the viewer subconsciously infuses the blankness with their own thoughts and feelings.
Basically, if we see a stick figure, we imagine the stick figure’s us. But if you draw Ronald Reagan’s face on the stick figure, that’s no longer possible: the stick figure is now Ronald Reagan and cannot be anyone else. It is now something specific, and loses its plasticity.
I think a lot of club music is deliberately unspecific in the same way, to leave room for the clubber’s emotions. When you hear “let’s get this party started!” you’re supposed to think of what a party means to you (talking, flirting, taking a dump in the punch bowl, whatever). Maybe this is why I don’t like it: I’m not really a party guy. I just want to go home, so that’s the meaning I bring to the song’s blank spaces.
#17 According to the back of the sleeve (it’s on Amazon) it’s “Yeah!”. Sleeve front appears to be the aberration.
#17 I am also not a party guy, at all – and even if I was, my sensory issues with flashing lights in particular would block off numerous party environments. So this sort of music pretty much has to work on me for home listening solely on the level of “haha dopamine go brrr” – something Lil Jon’s production on “Yeah!” absolutely does. It’s no-context fun, and Usher basically hides behind one hook and then adds another one or two himself, so I can still surf along for the ride until Luda comes in. His leery verse doesn’t let me do that and I resent him for it even if his voice and flow are fun (and they are).
Even in its excessive cynicism, the comment in #12 ironically nails the appeal of this. It’s a formula with obvious appeal if you can nail it, and Lil Jon nails it.
This song is a lot of fun.
And it towers over the singles that Usher would release a few years later.
Like the horribly skeezy ‘Lil Freak’ or another, spectacularly dumb song which I am shocked to discover is bunnies.
It’s like, Oh My Go…
@20: Now hey, I think there oughta be a case for 2012’s “Climax”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTyfVh3nmU
A number 4 hit in the UK. Wow, higher than here in the States.
This was so infectious and memorable. I loved the energy and whistles.
A stand out in quite a drab, serious year of chart toppers. It exemplified everything about Usher as a performer.