Usher's Wild Ride

Talent shows in Atlanta led him to a scout who set him up with DJs, a Star Search spot and eventually Bryant Reid, brother of Antonio "LA" Reid, of LaFace Records. The same day Usher performed "End of the Road" for LA and his partner, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, at their company headquarters, they signed him. A year later, though, puberty hit. "Looked like a damn machine gun hit my face," says Usher. "Then I got acne medicine that made me all light and shit." He lost his voice, too, and it looked like he might lose his deal. He was confused and angry, and he even punched a wall one night. "How can you embrace me and then all of a sudden you don't even want to return my phone calls?" he says. "The night I hit that wall was intense. I took off for thirty minutes, nonstop, five in the morning, running, running, running. Finally, all out of breath, I thought, 'You know what? I don't care what they think. I'm going to win.'"

So he had a bandage on his hand in 1994 when he arrived in New York, which was where LA sent him to craft an image and an album with Puff Daddy. "Hardest days of my life," he says. "I had to knuckle up, figure shit out in New York by my mother-fucking self." They called him Baby Huey, and he was the youngest member of the Bad Boy posse. "Puff introduced me to a totally different set of shit — sex, specifically," says Usher. "Sex is so hot in the industry, man." While he was in New York, he lived at Puffy's house in Scarsdale. "There was always girls around. You'd open a door and see somebody doing it, or several people in a room having an orgy. You never knew what was going to happen."

Usher experimented with women, too, but he says he didn't actually consummate sex until he was nineteen. "Strange, but I never busted a nut before then," he says. "I'd just do it until I could tell the girl was feeling good, and then I'd stop."

Reid, who once owned the Alpharetta house where Usher now lives, executive-produced two of Usher's albums under BMG's Arista Records until the beginning of this year, when he was abruptly fired, and the label shuttered. Reid jumped to Island Def Jam, and Usher stayed with BMG, at Jive. Usher says that he hasn't heard from Reid lately. "What kind of cocky motherfucker doesn't return your phone calls?" he asks. "C'mon. Maybe he's busy. But I find it disrespectful. He's not even called me to congratulate me on my 1.1 million. What? Before the news, during the news and after the news, not one call from LA. It's cool — I'm not expecting one. But it did say a lot about his character." ("Usher's real sensitive," says Reid, adding that he told Usher's manager to relay a message. "By the way," he points out, "we share the success, and he didn't call to congratulate me, either.")

Usher is driving on the freeway now, with the Black Eyed Peas' Elephunk, which he's been listening to nonstop, pumping in the background. "Man, I'm hungry," he says, A minute later, his phone rings, with his mother on the line. She has booked him into an awards show he doesn't want to do without asking him about it first, and now he'll look like a diva if he pulls out. "You didn't even consult me?" he asks angrily, beginning a five-minute rant that increases in pitch and intensity. "I'm not doing it, dawg. I'm not going to be part of your madness. You're playing this like a game, and you just lost a round! You're not thinking of what's good for Usher — strategic moves, deliberate movement." He's quiet, for a moment, and then there's an ugly crescendo: "I'm not gonna do it. I'm just not going to do it! I'm-a talk to you later."

He flips the phone up and stares out the windshield. This time he does not say, "April Fools'."

Since Usher is always running hours behind schedule — "Boy wears a $40,000 watch with the wrong time on it," says Carter — it's the middle of the night before we start talking about sex. It may have taken him a while to get comfortable with the whole orgasm thing, but once he did it became inextricably linked with love for him. "You Make Me Wanna," on 1997's My Way, is about the best relationship he's ever had, he says. "Three women at one time: I know it was wrong, but it worked for me." he says. "I was with one woman who was really supportive, like a backbone. Then there was a homey, who knew about the other two, and another where it was sex, sex, sex, all the time. The song's about leaving the backbone for the sexy girl, which I did. It didn't work, though: You can't turn a ho into a housewife."

Despite these fighting words, Usher is feeling lonely tonight, it's clear. He talks about Karon, the girl with whom he first felt comfortable enough to finish sex — on one hand, he has a tattoo of a "K" and a heart: "I guess I thought it wasn't a good idea to get her whole name," he says later. "That way I can always hold out for a Keisha or something." He's messing around in the basement recording studio with his half brother James Lackey, 19, who looks exactly like him but miniaturized. A Girls Gone Wild commercial comes on the TV. "Dude, they're really doing it." Usher says, mesmerized by the image of two girls making out on the floor of some skanky bar. "Where are these girls? I don't ever see these girls. I want the girls on Girls Gone Wild. Come see me, man."