Usher Hopes 'Scream' Will Be the Song Of The Summer

On top of his club-banging hits and soulful voice, Usher has another impressive skill: creating the song of summer. Usher has ruled the airwaves in the summer for years, with hits like "You Make Me Wanna" and "U Remind Me" making fans roll down their windows and pump up their radios to his infectious tracks.

Most recently, in 2010, Usher hit the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 during the summer months with his inescapable hit "OMG," and now he's looking to repeat that success with "Scream," the second single from his seventh studio album.

"Let's get going, summer is almost here!" Usher told. "It's intended to be that, but I don't think that was the only thing. We thought about live performance, we thought about mixing and matching and also giving people an energy that only [producer Max Martin] would be able to create."

"Scream" is the latest single from Usher's just-released album, Looking 4 Myself, which he hopes will not only get people on the dance floor, but also affect them in a more personal manner.

"If I'm gonna move you, I want to move you. I hope that it could be something that could be life-changing," the singer last month during "MTV First: Usher." "You may be going through something real crazy, who knows, and just need to get out and just enjoy yourself. So I always think about the club, I always think about that song that will be able to let you out of that slump, if you're in it."

Usher's latest album, which he called an "evolution" of sound, is just the next step in his musical risk-taking. He credits longtime producer Jermaine Dupri with the opportunity to reach many different genres of music.

"If I do track back to the first time I was about to take a risk, even though it wasn't about my direction, it was more so by Jermaine Dupri's direction with 'You Make Me Wanna,' " Usher said. "You didn't really hear that tone or that instrument on top of an R&B record, so it was an incredible collaboration or mixture of urban and classic R&B or pop... that really began to open up the conversation and allow people to understand, 'Oh, wow, this is not just an artist that you could put in a box or put in a specific category.' "

Are you excited for Usher's album? Let us know in the comments!