Usher's Wild Ride

Today, what Usher has taken up is cigars. He's at his highly interior-decorated five-bedroom house in Alpharetta, Georgia — it's the same subdivision where Faith Evans and Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown live, only a block from former Atlanta Falcons player Andre Rison's old house, the one TLC's Lisa Lopes burned down in 1994. "The hood of Alpharetta," Usher calls it. He's doing back-to-back interviews and photo shoots for media riled up by the 1.1 million, and every time he ducks into the kitchen, where I'm waiting, he's got a cigar dangling from his mouth or tucked behind his ear. Terence Carter, his road manager, goes out twice to pick up a series of cigar cases and shafts, and upon his return Usher examines each one carefully, selecting a small silver mini-humidor the size of a Filofax. He'll carry it everywhere he goes for the next couple of days, but he won't actually smoke any cigars.

"What is all this?" asks Jonnetta Patton, his mom and manager, moving the cases aside to make a lunch of grilled chicken and broccoli (a big, jovial woman, she has lost twenty pounds by eating primarily this). "It's not April Fools' anymore."

"His new thing," says Carter, laughing. "The James Dean thing."

As Patton extols the virtues of colonics, Usher harasses Keith Thomas about what to do with his hair today. "Let's do some wild shit," Usher says. "Polka dots, something different. A mohawk!"

"Can't be a mohawk," says Thomas. "Puff already did that."

"Fuck that, young brother," says Usher. "He freaked it to look all classy. We freak it to look like I don't give a fuck."

That Usher desperately gives a fuck, however, is not up for debate. Despite his attempt to project an outlaw image, worrying impulses manifest themselves in small tics, like separating M&Ms in different bowls by color, which he does to keep his hands busy when he's sitting around, or the need to coordinate the fifty or so pairs of jeans in his closet by fade color. Whenever he goes out, in addition to carrying $5,000 in cash ("Best of the best taught me that," he boasts), he takes along a small bottle of hand sanitizer. "You have no idea how many germs there are out there," he says, rubbing some of the clear gunk on his knuckles. "Think about how many times you grab your nuts, as a man. I know I scratch my ass, pick my nose — who else is doing that? At one time I wouldn't even shake anyone's hand, I'd give them a pound."

Usher wasn't actually eating the M&Ms when I met him: He'd seen The Passion of the Christ a few days earlier, and it had affected him so profoundly that he had decided to fast, in hopes of glimpsing a bit of what God had in store for him — "I'm experiencing some transfer of energy, of spirit, right now," he says. To feel deeply, to remain sensitive, perhaps oversensitive, to what both God and women have to offer, is at the core of who Usher wants to be, and the story of his upbringing is a trail of tears. Raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by a mom who worked as a Blue Cross Blue Shield claims adjuster and led the local Baptist church choir, Usher Raymond IV never knew his dad — his mom left him when Usher was just one and a half. Though they have talked a little in recent years, father and son are still estranged. "He was a fly guy, a player, into drugs," says Usher. "I can't tell you exactly about him, because I don't know the dude."

Usher, then, grew up surrounded by women, and loved it: He'd always try to steal kisses from girls at church, crying if they didn't comply. "Spoiled brat, that's what I was," he says. "But the ladies liked me, too." Dreams of becoming a preacher shifted at twelve, when he joined a local singing and step group, with the handle Cha-Cha. ("I got it from one of the tones on my Casio recorder," he says. "Cha-cha-cha. How corny.") His mother was at this point convinced of his talent, and she insisted on moving the family to Atlanta so he could try his luck in the big leagues. Usher was devastated. "I was crying every day," he says. He even ran away one night, waiting in a local baseball field with his backpack for a friend to pick him up; his stepfather showed up instead. "I was screaming, 'I hate you, you took my dreams away!'" says Usher.