The two most important people to lend him a helping hand in the beginning were Puff Daddy and Jermaine Dupri. Usher says that Dupri taught him how music works and Puff Daddy (later Diddy) showed him how to craft his image. Puff Daddy co-produced Usher's first album and Dupri started working with Usher on his second album. Crucially, Dupri made sure Usher participated in the songwriting.
Usher is a minority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA basketball team. According to Forbes, he invested about $9 million in the team in 2005, soon after they drafted LeBron James. This appears to be a savvy investment, as the team has increased in value a great deal.
Usher is the go-to guy for tributes to legends who could both sing and dance. He feted Michael Jackson at
Jackson's Madison Square Garden tribute concerts in 2001, and he did some James Brown tributes in 2005, including an appearance with the Godfather Of Soul at the Grammy Awards in 2005. He pulled off an impressive Prince tribute at the Grammy Awards in 2020, performing "
Little Red Corvette," "
When Doves Cry" and "
Kiss" with Prince collaborator Sheila E on percussion.
He cites entertainer/vocalists like Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown as big influences. He also listened to a lot of gospel, since his mother directed his youth choir in church and he loved listening to The Winans. As far as his dance moves, he gets them from guys like Bob Fosse, Ben Vereen, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.
Usher was born in Dallas but was raised in Chattanooga and moved to Atlanta with his family when he was 12. At 14, he landed a deal with LaFace Records and released his first single, "
Call Me A Mack," included on the soundtrack to the 1993 movie
Poetic Justice.
He made his movie debut in the sci-fi thriller The Faculty in 1998. He also appears in the movies She's All That, Light It Up, In The Mix, and Killers, as well as in a number of TV series. In 2006 he played the role of Billy Flynn in the Broadway musical Chicago.
2004 was a huge year for Usher. "
Yeah!," the lead single from his album
Confessions, exploded, going to #1 in February and staying for 12 weeks. "
Burn" and "
Confessions, Pt. 2" also hit the top spot, and for six weeks that summer, all three songs occupied the Top 10. The next single, the Alicia Keys duet "
My Boo," also went to #1.
Usher became a vegetarian shortly after the death of his father, Usher Raymond III, from a heart attack in January 2008. Several years later he became a vegan, dropping all egg and dairy products for health reasons.
Usher married his first wife, stylist Tameka Foster, the mother of his sons Usher Raymond V and Naviyd Ely, in August 2007. They split two years later and Usher filed for divorce from Foster in June 2009.
Usher wed his longtime girlfriend and manager Grace Miguel in September 2015 during a vacation in Cuba, but the pair separated at the beginning of 2018. The singer filed papers for divorce on December 28, 2018, using the same attorney he retained for his previous custody fight with Tameka Foster.
Usher tied the knot for the third time when he wed music executive Jennifer Goicoechea in Las Vegas on February 11, 2024, after headlining the halftime show at the Super Bowl. They exchanged vows at The Terrace Gazebo, an outdoor wedding chapel.
When he was 12, Usher was a member of a five-member boy band in Chattanooga called Nubeginning. They released an album in 1991 that was rereleased in 2002 as Nubeginning Featuring Usher Raymond IV.
He calls the evolution of his style a "Rev Pop" movement or simply "Rev." He told MTV: "I did it with '
Yeah!,' taking a cultural experience, and also worldwide recognition of a feeling, and putting the soul in the middle of it. Not allowing it to shift heavily to R&B genre, or pop. I did it again with '
OMG,' once again putting the soul in the middle of it, which was an electric-pop experience, with the soul. It's bringing those elements together to tell a story. The movement is called Rev."
Usher started a record label called RBMG Records in 2008 for the express purpose of signing Justin Bieber. RBMG is a collaboration with the media mogul Scooter Braun, who found Bieber on YouTube. By setting up the label, they were able to woo Bieber by promising Usher as a mentor. It was a great fit: Usher showed him the ropes and they got along really well.
He's very shrewd financially, investing many of the millions he earned when he rose to fame in stocks, real estate, and other wealth-building instruments.
His full name is Usher Raymond IV, but he knows little of the three Ushers who came before him. His parents split when he was an infant, and he had little contact with his father, who died in 2008.
Still, he passed down the name to his son, Usher Raymond V, born in 2007. He's known as "Cinco."
Usher headlined the Super Bowl LVIII halftime show at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on February 11, 2024. Various guest artists joined him during his performance, including Alicia Keys, H.E.R., will.i.am, Lil Jon, and Ludacris.
After the historic success of Confessions, Usher seriously considered stepping away from music altogether. The reason wasn't burnout in the usual rock-star sense; it was pressure. Having hit such a commercial peak, Usher admitted he wasn't sure he wanted the weight of trying to outdo 10-million-plus sales again.
Part of Usher's hesitation stemmed from signing his original record deal as a teenager. At the height of his fame, he didn't own his masters and had limited control beyond the creative side, which made sustaining his career feel more like navigating obligations than chasing inspiration. Add to that major life shifts - marriage, fatherhood, and reflecting on not having had a relationship with his own father - and he reached a point where he wondered if he'd already done what he came to do.
