Usher Raymond IV (born October 14, 1978) is a five-time Grammy Award-winning American R&B and pop singer, dancer and actor who rose to fame in the mid-late 1990s. Born in the United States, Usher is of Haitian origin. To date, he has sold approximately 20 million albums in the US and over 30 million worldwide. His 2004 album, Confessions, sold 1.1 million copies in the United States in its first week of release — setting a record for the most number of records sold in week for an R&B artist. His 12 week reign at the top of the US chart with Yeah!, featuring crunk artist Lil Jon gave him the new nickname “The King Of Crunk & B”, despite only having ever produced one song with ‘crunk’ influences at the time. Over the past twelve years he has contributed eight number-one US R&B hits, seven top-five hits, and three number-one UK hits. He has also had three top-five albums in the US with Confessions being his only number one album in the US. Whereas he has had two number-one albums in the UK, 8701 and Confessions

(born October 14, 1978) is a five-time Grammy Award-winning American R&B and pop singer, dancer and actor who rose to fame in the mid-late 1990s. Born in the United States, Usher is of Haitian origin. To date, he has sold approximately 20 million albums in the US and over 30 million worldwide. His 2004 album, Confessions, sold 1.1 million copies in the United States in its first week of release — setting a record for the most number of records sold in week for an R&B artist. His 12 week reign at the top of the US chart with Yeah!, featuring crunk artist Lil Jon gave him the new nickname “The King Of Crunk & B”, despite only having ever produced one song with ‘crunk’ influences at the time. Over the past twelve years he has contributed eight number-one US R&B hits, seven top-five hits, and three number-one UK hits. He has also had three top-five albums in the US with Confessions being his only number one album in the US. Whereas he has had two number-one albums in the UK, 8701 and Confessions

 

Early life
Born to Usher Raymond III and Jonetta Patton in Dallas, Texas; Usher was primarily raised by his mother, who relocated the family from Tennessee to Atlanta, Georgia when he was a child. She raised her sons within the foundations of faith and family afforded by St. Elmo’s Missionary Baptist Church, for which she served as choir director. Usher started singing in the church choir, and soon his singing talents became obvious. As early as junior high school, Usher began entering local talent shows. Six months after moving to Atlanta, at age thirteen, Usher was performing at a Star Search audition when he was spotted by an A&R rep from LaFace Records who arranged an audition with L.A. Reid. A record contract soon followed.
 

Music career

Usher (1993—1996)
At age 13, Usher was performing at a Star Search audition when he was spotted by an A&R rep from LaFace who arranged an audition with L.A. Reid. A record contract soon followed. Usher explains:

I have been building my career since I was a little boy, because singing had always been what I wanted to do. At first I thought about playing [professional] football, then I wanted to play basketball, but in the end it was all about the music. It’s my biggest passion and my biggest joy.

Usher was one month shy of his 15th birthday when his modest debut LaFace single made the R&B chart in late-1993, “Call Me a Mack,” from the movie soundtrack of John Singleton’s Poetic Justice.

In August 1994, LaFace Records released Usher’s self-titled debut album. Heavily involved in the project was Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, who produced several of the albums tracks and co-executive produced the album. Usher peaked at number twenty-five on the R&B Albums chart - spinning off three singles: “Can U Get Wit It,” “Think Of You,” and “The Many Ways.” Though the album was moderately successful and garnered Usher attention with urban listeners, it wasn’t a runaway hit and went virtually unnoticed by more commercial audiences. Some critics, meanwhile, criticized Usher for its quasi-adult theme coming from a then sixteen year old singer. Usher, himself, later admitted that he wasn’t fully comfortable with the direction of the album. The album was not a huge success. In America the album sold 48,000 copies and worldwide sales of nearly 100,000. Sales were initially lower than expected.

Over the next three years, Usher honed his skills as a stage performer, concentrated on graduating from high school, and laid the groundwork for his second album. Meanwhile, he was heard on “Let’s Straighten It Out,” a 1995 duet with fellow Atlanta teen recording artist Monica; and 1996’s “Dreamin’,” the first single from Rhythm of the Games, LaFace’s Olympic Games benefit album.

My Way (1997—1998)
Usher developed a friendship with Jermaine Dupri, with whom he co-wrote and produced several tracks for his sophomore album. The advance single, “You Make Me Wanna” was serviced to radio in summer 1997 and hit #1 R&B in its second week out - the same week that My Way was released.

My Way, co-executive produced by L.A. Reid, Babyface and Dupri, marked the real genesis of Usher’s career as a star. “You Make Me Wanna” stayed on top of the R&B/Hip-Hop track charts for a total of 11 weeks (the longest-charting R&B hit in more than 3 years) and at #2 on the Pop charts for 7 weeks (second only to Elton John’s “Candle In the Wind” tribute to Princess Diana). The single eventually remained on the R&B chart for an unprecedented 71 weeks and became Usher’s first platinum single. Into 1998, it segued into another massive platinum hit, “Nice & Slow”, which reached #1 R&B (for 8 weeks) and #1 Pop (for 2 weeks). My Way, whose title tune single extended into the summer 1998 (#2 pop/#4 R&B, also platinum), went on to earn 6x platinum album sales in the U.S. alone. Interim, Usher received his first Grammy Award nomination as “Best Male R&B Vocal Performance” for “You Make Me Wanna,” which was also nominated for a Soul Train Music Award as “Best Male R&B/Soul Single”.

Usher hit the road on a series of engagements including a spot on Puffy’s No Way Out tour, dates with Mary J. Blige, and the opening spot on Janet Jackson’s Velvet Rope tour. There were television appearances on the Billboard Music Awards, VIBE-TV, The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Chris Rock Show, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, UNICEF’s Gift Of Song, Nickelodeon’s Big Help-a-Thon, and All That. Usher made his acting debut on Brandy’s UPN television series Moesha, which resulted in a recurring role on the series and subsequently his first lead role in a movie, the eerie 1998 thriller, The Faculty.

Live (1999)
Usher’s extracurricular activities outside of the recording studio gathered momentum over the following year as he was cast in the daytime drama The Bold and the Beautiful and was seen in the family series Promised Land. He completed two more films, the Freddie Prinze, Jr. high school comedy She’s All That, and his first starring role in another high school-based drama, Light It Up.

 

A subsequent role in the Disney TV movie “Geppetto” (with Drew Carey), “required me to step outside of what I do, especially as a dancer,” Usher recalled. “I looked at the work of people like Ben Vereen and Fred Astaire and doing that part definitely helped me increase my dancing vocabulary.”

Usher was also starting to involve himself in community activities as a role model to youth. He served as national spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “Get Big On Safety” campaign, and appeared on NBC’s NBA Inside Stuff. He participated in the NBA “Stay In School” program and performed at several of the franchises’ jamborees entertaining students while showing them the importance of education.

As touring continued and Usher’s concert audiences grew, it was a natural move to issue an album for his millions of fans. Live documented how much the material had changed since the earlier studio recordings. Most of the singles were reprised along with concert versions of some key album tracks, and a surprise or two (like the medley of Bobby Brown hits). Lil’ Kim showed up to add her risqué vocals to the mid-tempo “Just Like Me,” and there were also guest performances by Jagged Edge, Trey Lorenz, Shanice, Twista, and Manuel Seal. As a bonus, the Live album wrapped up with remixes of “My Way,” “Nice & Slow” and “You Make Me Wanna.”

8701 (2001—2002)
Usher’s energy brought him back into the recording studio for his fourth album, 8701 (named for the years of his career at that point (1987-2001), and it was also released on August 7, 2001, or 8/7/01). His international appeal was evident when “Pop Ya Collar”, produced and co-written by Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, was released outside the U.S. early in the year and became a #2 hit in the UK. Back home, “U Remind Me” (produced by Philadelphia’s Edmund “Eddie Hustle” Clement) was chosen as the album’s first single. Exactly one month before the album’s release, “U Remind Me” hit #1 on the U.S. Hot 100, staying on top of the charts for 4 weeks.

One month after the album’s release, “U Got It Bad,” a slow jam written by Usher, Dupri and Brian Cox rocketed up the charts and also peaked on the top of the charts (6 weeks), while staying at #1 of the R&B/Hip-Hop tracks chart for further 7 weeks. “U Don’t Have To Call,” one of two album tracks produced by the Neptunes, kept the heat on the singles charts into 2002, reaching the top 3. As an aside, Usher joined P. Diddy and Loon on his runaway #2 Pop/#2 R&B hit, “I Need a Girl,” which spent a half-year on the charts in 2002.

By that time, “Can U Help Me” (a collaboration with hitmakers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis) was released as the fourth single from 8701 in late-summer 2002. To date the album had past 4x platinum, selling more than 8 million copies worldwide. The year closed out with an interesting trio of dramatic TV series appearances, all in November, on “The Twilight Zone,” “7th Heaven,” and Dick Clark’s “American Dreams” (portraying Marvin Gaye).

Because of Grammy deadline peculiarities of eligibility, “U Remind Me” was able to win the Best Male R&B Vocal award at the ceremonies in February 2002; and “U Don’t Have To Call” won the same award at the ceremonies one year later, making Usher the only artist besides Luther Vandross (more than a decade before) and Stevie Wonder (back in the 1970s) to win that award in consecutive years.
 

Confessions (2004—2005)
Confessions was released on March 23, 2004 just as the Lil Jon produced “Yeah!” was in its 6th week at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and 5th week at #1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart. The album’s 1.1 million unit first week was not only the highest first week numbers ever scanned by a male R&B artist in Soundscan’s 13-year history (breaking R. Kelly’s record of 540k for TP-2.com back in 2000) – but also the highest first week scans by any male artist since Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP (also in 2000, with 1.7 million units). As a result the album became one of the most successful records of the year, topping the world charts for several weeks and eventually selling more than 15 million copies all over the globe.

This success was simultaneously extended by the releases of the album’s second single, “Burn”, and third single, “Confessions Part II”, which once again topped Billboard’s Hot 100 for further ten weeks and made Usher the third lead artist in pop music history - but the first solo artist - to have three singles inside the Hot 100’s top 10, since the Beatles in 1964 and the Bee Gees in 1978. In September 2004, “My Boo”, Usher’s first collaboration with singer Alicia Keys (which was included on a Special Edition, released a half year after the orginal version) also peaked at #1 and gave him a total of 28 weeks at #1 in 2004, In the December of the same year another single made its way to the top 10, when the album’s final single “Caught Up” peaked at #8. The track also was used as the lead single of the Rhythm City CD/DVD, Usher released in March 2005 with a few previously unreleased tracks and a short motion picture.

In the meantime Usher won a huge number of awards, beginning with two MTV Awards for “Best Male R&B Artist” and “Yeah!” (Viewers’ Choice Award) in June 2004. In August, Usher interrupted his sold-out North American tour (with Kanye West and Christina Milian) to pick up the first two MTV Video Music Awards of his career. After opening the show’s first-ever broadcast from Miami Beach with a live performance of “Yeah!”, Usher went on to win Best Male Video and Best Dance Video for the hit.

On September 16, the World Music Awards departed from its traditional site in Monaco to stage its first global telecast from Las Vegas. The show, broadcast on the ABC network in the U.S., found Usher on the receiving end of three awards: “Best Male Artist”, “Best Male Pop Artist” and “Best R&B Artist”. One month later he furthermore won “Male R&B Artist of the Year” and “R&B/Rap Collaboration of the Year” for “Yeah!” at the annual Source Hip-Hop Music Awards, followed-up by a Nordic Music Award (”Top Male Artist”), three Radio Music Awards, four American Music Awards and two more MTV Europe Music Awards. At the 2005 Grammy Awards ceremony, Usher also won three Grammy awards, including “R&B Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocals” (”My Boo” with Alicia Keys), “Rap/Sung Collaboration” (”Yeah!”) and “Contemporary R&B Album” (Confessions).It was rumored that he quit the music business to focus on someting else in life but seems like its not true.

In spring 2005 the singer once again entered the top 5 of Billboard’s Hot 100 with Ludacris and Lil Jon when he was featured on the second single from Lil Jon’s album Crunk Juice, entitled Lovers and Friends. The track eventually managed to peak at #3 on the U.S. singles chart. Around the same time Usher also finished working on his motion picture In the Mix, a crime-comedy, in which he portrayed the leading role Darrell, a DJ. Released in on November 23, 2005, the film performed poorly at the box office, and failed to earn critical acclaim (the film was temporary voted #2 in the IMDb bottom 100).
 

Currently (2006-present)
Usher is currently working on his fifth studio album, which is expected for early 2007.On 13 June 2006 Usher went to work cleaning up a New Orleans school that had been closed since Hurricane Katrina. Joining another dozens of volunteers, he helped clean the overgrown lawn of the “International School of Louisiana”, a foreign language-based charter school. The school has been closed since August 29. Usher also said “To see it, in this state, it’s devastating,”

On August 22, 2006, Usher will take over the role of Billy Flynn in the long-running Broadway musical Chicago, and will continue in that role until October 1.
 

US Records
In 2005, Usher announced that he was beginning his own record label, US Records. The first two signees are Rico Love and One Chance. The first album from the label, Rico Love’s The Fifth Element, is expected to be released in the fall of 2006.