Usher

An American R&B singer and songwriter and one of the most successful performers, Usher, was born in 1978 in Dallas, Texas. 

His parents, Jonetta Patton and Usher Raymond the 3rd broke up when the boy was only 1 year old. 5 years later, Usher’s mother got married again and gave birth to his stepbrother James Layke. Jonetta was quite a religious woman, and she directed the performances of the youth church choir when she had some free time. At the age of 9, Asher joined the choir. His grandmother paid attention to the boy's talent and insisted on moving to a bigger city, where there are more chances and opportunities to develop an artistic career and personality. Thus the family settled up in the Peach State - Georgia.  

While visiting North Springs high school, Usher joined the band “Nu Beginning” and tried himself at recording songs and studio work for the first time in his teenage life. The first year of 1991 was notable for Usher, as far as he with another 4 members of the band recorded 10 songs, which was included in the album under the title “Nubeginning Featuring Usher Raymond IV”. However, it was not successful because of its poor promotion: the album was spread only using postal subscriptions. Jonetta, who believed in her son’s talent and success, decided to get him out of the group.  

At the tender age of 13, Usher got to know Bobby Brown’s security guard, who provided the young gifted guy with profound support and promotion: he carried future stars to various talent shows and festivals. One of such performances was crucial for Usher. After getting acquainted with the representative of the “LaFace Records” label, he signed a contract with the latter. Jonetta stood out as Usher’s manager and discharged its duties till 2007. 

As it happens with each and every guy, being a 14 years old guy Usher experienced a voice break. The recording label even thought about terminating the contract with him. Puff Daddy helped Usher to recover and decided to be the producer of the guy’s debut self-titled album, which was released in 1994. The main topics of the album were sex and love and that was pretty unexpected from the 14 years old. At the same time, the studio work gained critics’ and public’s appreciation: it was placed at the 25th position in the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop music chart and sold over 500 thousand copies.  

The next album “My Way” saw the world in autumn in 1997 and managed to become more outstanding than the previous one. It was nominated for Grammy Awards several times and received 6 platinum certifications in the USA. “You Make Me Wanna” hit single feat Jermaine Dupri took first place in the British music charts, received gold and platinum certification in the US, and was praised with Soul Train Music Awards. Another single, “Nice & Slow”, reached the top position in the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  

The beginning of the 21st century was quite unpleasant for Usher. There were some singles from his 3rd studio album, “All About U”, published prematurely. The R&B star postponed the release of the album and excluded mentioned singles. Several months later, Usher released the same album but changed its title to “8701” and included 17 singles. “U Remind Me” and “U Don’t Have to Call” hits brought the artist Grammy Award as the best R&B performer.  

One of Usher’s most popular and recognized songs is definitely his hit single “Yeah!” (feat. Lil Jon and Ludacris) from his 4th studio album “Confessions”. 6 weeks after the release the song was at the top of Billboard Hot 100 and sold over 1 million copies during the first week after release.  

In the US, the previously mentioned album became a brilliant one, receiving 3 Grammys. The Usher himself was granted the best singer of the year in 2004.

Another mixtape, “Here I Stand”, appeared in 2008 and repeated the fame of all the other albums of Usher: it peaked the Billboard 200 chart. “Love in This Club” single is considered to be in the list of most popular Usher’s songs and a clip to it was nominated as the Best male music video by MTV Video Music Awards.  

3 more studio albums “Raymond v. Raymond”, “Looking 4 Myself”, “Hard II Love” were released in 2010, 2012, and 2016 correspondingly. However, “Confessions” is still the best-selling album of the singer. 

Besides singing and songwriting Usher is fond of acting. The first serious part he played in an American hostage crime teen drama film “Light Up”, which received quite controversial feedback from the critics. He also starred in such films as “Geppetto”, “Texas Rangers”, “In The Mix”, “Killers”, “Scary Movie 5”, “Burden”, “Hustlers” and TV shows and series: “Moesha”, “Promised Land”, “Sabrina the Teenage Twitch”, The Twilight Zone”, “The Voice” etc. 

The first love of R&B star was Chilly Thomas, who was a member of the “TLC” band. Their affairs lasted for 2 years and they broke up as far as the song’s lyrics about cheating and unplanned pregnancy made Chilly to have doubts about Usher’s loyalty. In 2007 the artist got married to Tameka Foster, which has her own 3 children, and gave birth to 2 boys from Usher. In 2009 Usher and Tameka divorced and the right to raise the children came to their father.