This story was originally published on Aug. 5, 2001.
Twenty-two-year-olds who have a Porsche Boxster and a Lincoln Navigator parked in front of their million dollar-plus home just shouldn’t look like this.
And yet here is Usher Raymond, one of R&B’s biggest pop stars, looking deeply pensive. Almost as pensive, in fact, as legendary singer Marvin Gaye looks in the towering painting of him that hangs in the foyer of Raymond’s Alpharetta manse.
It couldn’t be comeback jitters. On this unusually tolerable summer day, the crooner’s single “U Remind Me” sits atop the Billboard pop chart for the third week in a row. And his third studio album, “8701,” has hit the No. 1 spot in Britain. The title is a reference to his musical career — 1987 was the year he discovered his interest — and to the album’s U.S. release date, Aug. 7, 2001. “8701″ is not only a warm and personable record, but its consistent melody and cache of potential hits may position Raymond as a 2000s version of the beloved Michael Jackson of the ‘80s.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
“There’s definitely a buzz on this record and Usher’s return,” says Tony Brown, program director at V-103 radio, Atlanta’s longtime ratings leader.
The pensiveness isn’t caused by his current, and rare, turn in the rumor mill. Since 30-year-old Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas of pop trio TLC appeared in Raymond’s video for “U Remind Me,” and he made a point of singing to her in June at the BET Awards, the talk has been that the two are dating. (Both deny it. Thomas did so rather matter-of-factly when asked by a listener on rap station Hot-97.5. Raymond does so more coyly: “We are good friends.”)
Actually, what has made the singer’s lightly stubbled face unusually somber is, he says, “the simple fact that I have no life.’’
“I’ve been doing this since I was 13 years old,” he says without self-pity. “I’ve been locked in the business. I’ve learned a lot. And I’ve been through a lot.”
Raymond’s climb began with a 1992 audition for Antonio “L.A.” Reid in the Buckhead office that housed LaFace Records. Reid says he “saw the star Usher is now” in the Chattanooga teenager and signed him on the spot.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
LaFace teamed Raymond with music mogul Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and, a year later, released his 1994 debut, “Usher.” Though the playful “Call Me a Mack” and almost inappropriately seductive “Can U Get Wit It” got airplay — and the standout “Think of You” reached the R&B Top 10 — the album’s sales of 500,000 copies were considered a disappointment.
Four years later, LaFace paired Raymond with Atlanta music force Jermaine Dupri, whose work with hip-hop’s Kris Kross and R&B quartet Xscape attested to his strength in working with young artists. The result was Usher’s confident and more accessible album “My Way.” It sold more than 7 million copies and yielded his first No. 1 R&B single, “You Make Me Wanna,” followed by the ballad “Nice & Slow,” his first No. 1 pop single.
Credit: AJC staff
Credit: AJC staff
Not only was musical success at hand at this point, but he was five years older --- and a sex symbol. Someone who would be taken seriously when he sang a come-on like “Can U Get Wit It.”
Hollywood noticed. And after Raymond toured with Combs, R&B singer Mary J. Blige and pop icon Janet Jackson, instead of coming up for air, he started making movies.
Diverging paths
His first on-screen appearance was in the teen sci-fi adventure “The Faculty”; then came the hormone-oriented “She’s All That.” In early 1999, Raymond hit theaters in his first starring role, in the high school drama “Light It Up,” and also filmed the yet-to-be released “Texas Rangers.”
“The offers were really coming in,” he says, now in the semi-safari-themed guesthouse he adjourns to when he wants time alone on the property he shares with his mother, Jonnetta Patton, and 17-year-old brother, James. “And a lot of the movies I had on the table turned out to be successful movies . . . like ‘Save the Last Dance.’ "
So what kept him out of the role that Sean Patrick Thomas took? Reid, then co-president of LaFace Records.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
“One of the most difficult things I deal with in my job is having to go to my artists and say what they may not want to hear,” allows Reid, who left Atlanta last year to become president of New York-based Arista Records, taking his LaFace acts with him. “It really creates tension sometimes, and for a minute there was some tension between me and Usher. . . . But I have to deal with the realities. So I was like, ‘Hey, man, get back in the studio. You’re not a movie star. We spent a lot of time developing you as a recording star. And that’s the foundation of your audience.’ "
Raymond says it was hard to take that directive from the man he says is like a father to him. (He rarely speaks with his actual father.) And it’s clear that he still hasn’t totally accepted it.
“Oh yeah! But you know what? That’s a page in my life that I have to turn. I can’t keep going back thinking about that chapter. I’ve got to use the knowledge I’m gaining from this book, to get me further. Move forward.”
Credit: AJC staff
Credit: AJC staff
So Raymond went back into the studio, starting with his collaborator and now close friend Dupri. This time around, he was much more involved in the process, producing and writing.
“I’d done a lot of growing between 18 and 21, and JD set me on my way to revealing that in the music,” Usher says. “Lost love. Falling in love. Falling out of love. Life and the sacrifices that I’ve made as an artist not having a life. It was me at that moment.”
Eventually they put together an album, at one time called “All About U,” that all felt made that declaration.
Work and more work
That was about a year ago. Then things started getting shaky.
“I got cold feet,” Reid concedes. “I started feeling we weren’t there yet, creatively.” At the same time, some of the songs started appearing on Napster, a song-swapping Internet site. Raymond’s mother, who is also his manager, was getting reports that a bootleg version of the album was being sold in New York. And the cocky, uptempo single “Pop Ya Collar” was leaked to a Los Angeles radio station.
“My promotions staff told me the stations are calling us for this single, and we should go (with it) now,” Reid recalls. “I’m feeling like I don’t believe in the record yet. But everyone else is saying, ‘Hey, we gotta go.’ So OK, cool, we give it a try. About two weeks into the record, I heard the song on the radio in Atlanta and finally said, ‘Just stop.’ This is not what I want. It just wasn’t the big lead single I wanted from Usher. He deserved a bigger hit.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Raymond took it as another blow. “I was hurt by a lot of things at that time: that the record was leaked; the Napster thing; that people were taking money out of my pocket by selling something we put thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars into for five bucks. But most of all, I am not a quitter. And I had to start, stop and start all over again to make a good introduction to this album. People don’t usually get second chances to make first impressions. That was a rough time for me.”
“I thought he was going to break,” his mother adds.
But Raymond got back into the studio. And over the next five months, working with producers the Neptunes (Jay-Z, ‘N Sync), he turned in two new keepers. Raymond then went to Minneapolis to work with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who are tied with Elvis Presley producer Steve Schultz for the second-highest number of No. 1 pop songs: 16.
“Our goal was to pull that singer we heard in him out,” Jam explains. “People always say, ‘Undoubtedly he can dance. He has great charisma. He’s had great songs.’ But I don’t think there were a lot of people who said, ‘He can flat-out sing.’ "
Jam and Lewis came up with four songs for the album, including “U Remind Me,” a sweetly worded “no thank you” to a woman too similar to a past, hurtful love.
In the end, they kept eight songs from “U” for “8701.” And the finished album sounds well worth the work.
“At 13, when he was auditioning in my office, I thought then Usher was an incredible entertainer,” Reid says. “I’m shocked to learn all these years later that he’s also a great singer.”
“There’s a lot of black artists out there now who claim R&B but are really more pop, or rap or something,” Raymond says. “I wanted to represent for R&B. For real soul music. Young people don’t see Marvin Gaye or James Brown or Michael Jackson even on the TV much anymore. There needs to be more artists that can educate and show these young people what those greats have done for the music, and me. That’s what I wanted to do on this album.”
Getting the word out
Alas, finishing the new album still didn’t alleviate all of Raymond’s concerns. Once “8701″ was done, there was still the matter of reintroducing himself. In the past, he was able to go to the LaFace offices on Peachtree Road, daily if necessary, and talk to, exchange ideas with and hang out with the executives guiding his projects.
“With a record company, in order to build anticipation and for everybody to be on the same page, you’ve got to be in their face,” he says.
Now, he says, with his label based in New York, “I speak to my manager. My manager speaks to their people. Their people speak to someone else, and by the time it gets to whom it was originally intended, it has changed. The impact is different.
“I have definitely been affected by LaFace closing and L.A. going to New York. Greatly! Greatly! Greatly!”
So, yes, he’s now considering moving to the Big Apple.
“I talked to L.A. today and he wants me to come to New York bad,” Raymond says.
(For the record, Reid, now a part-time Atlantan, says he wants Raymond only to take up residence there temporarily. “I want him to create a buzz for himself. Not a recording artist buzz, because he already has that. But a celebrity buzz. And the only place you can really do that is in a media center like an L.A. or New York. Atlanta is still the most beautiful place you can live in America.”)
The pull of Atlanta
Atlanta is also where Raymond’s family is. It’s where his burgeoning new label (Us Records), production company (Us Productions) and rehearsal facility are.
And, the heartthrob concedes, he’s dating someone here.
“Not Chilli, though!” he adds.
Then — talk about timing. Who appears on the flat-screen television above the fireplace but TLC in their music video for “Creep.”
Raymond, who was walking out the door, stops at the staircase and turns to the screen. As Thomas does a break-dancing move, he exclaims, “Whoa!” It’s as if he’s seeing the 6-year-old video for the first time.
Then, eyes still affixed to the screen, he offers, “If I had the time and was going to settle down and really be in a relationship, it would be with her.”
A few more seconds pass. And then, finally, for the first time in two hours, he smiles.
