Usher's Wild Ride

Earlier, though, he was up in the room that Chilli's son used to stay in. There are blue walls and bunk beds with red comforters, a graffiti cityscape across one wall and a black kid smashing through the air on a skateboard. No one has been in here in a while — little New York cabs and Harley Davidsons are lined up like they're in a parking lot. "It ain't easy to walk through this damn house," says Usher. "To see this room. There was a warmth here that's gone. There was a lot of love in this house, you know." He fiddles with the clasp on his cigar case.

"Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I did call Rozonda," he says later. "Would it become a good thing or would it become a bad thing? I think it's best that I don't call. She just sort of stays where she is, and I stay where I am, and if it's ever meant for us to speak again, it'll happen."

It's 4 A.M. when he asks me if I'd like to spend the night in his guesthouse. "Just don't say some Rick James I-put-you-in-the-closet shit," he says. He puts out clean towels, runs to the big house to get a new toothbrush and blows me a kiss good night.

On a cloudless Saturday, Usher travels from the Alpharetta hood to Chattanooga for his cousin's wedding, at a boxy new church with the charm of a civic center. The bridesmaids, in baby-blue polyester, sway behind LaShea Williams, pretty and petite as she gazes up at her towering groom. The pastor is going on about familial responsibility, about how Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of woman; Usher's cousin is a handful, though, and he keeps winking and snickering at the congregation throughout. "The role of the husband is the head," the pastor repeats, and then laughs. He nods at the groom. "You've got your hands full, my man," he says. "You may be tall, but that's all."

After Usher takes photos with an endless stream of second cousins, he turns to his mother and brother. "When I die, I want y'all to go to the clear port — not the airport, to the clear port," he says.

"What?" says Patton. "We just went to a wedding, and you're talking about a funeral?"

"Hear me, because I ain't written this in my will yet," he says. "It ain't gonna happen tomorrow. I could be 100 — the population of people at 100 is growing. I might even be 120 — man, I'd be miserable if so, but I might be. Anyway, there'll be a helicopter or jet waiting in Atlanta, and I want you to take me here to Chat. On the jet I'm talking about, you have to be cracking jokes, having fun, the whole nine around my casket. Matter fact, don't even walk at a pace when you get off — I want you all pimp-walking, you know, pimp-strolling down the aisle. And then have a bigass show and party, with the hot artist at the time playing, and you playing all your hits, too," he says to James. He sighs heavily and shakes his head. "I got to think about a funeral, because wedding ain't in my vocabulary," he says. "That'll be the big event right there. Wedding — nah."

[From Issue 948 — May 13, 2004]