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It's half past midnight, and "American Idol" champion Ruben Christopher Studdard is in the back of a chauffeured black Ford Excursion with a recording session in Cincinnati behind him and an American Idols concert in Pittsburgh ahead. He's singing along with Donny Hathaway on the speakers, shaking his fists and slapping his thighs, bouncing and singing like he's in church. Studdard calls himself "a church boy doin' R&B" and wants his debut album, Soulful, (to be released by J Records in September) to move you the way gospel music moves him. "I'm pickin' songs that we can turn into concert songs," he says. "If I don't feel I can bring a song to life onstage, I can't mess with it."
Studdard was training for a career in music long before American Idol was even created, so he also hopes to grow beyond the show. His album will have covers of "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" and "For All We Know" -- songs he learned from Al Green and Hathaway records -- as well as collaborations with Fat Joe, Missy Elliott and R. Kelly, who wrote what Studdard calls a "power-inspiration song" titled "Send Me an Angel." (Studdard sees nothing wrong in working with Kelly, who's facing child-pornography charges in Illinois. "That's a trip that R. has to deal with," he says. "All I want is a good song.") J Records president Clive Davis, who's working closely with Studdard to shape the album, said that advance orders have already topped one million. "The fact that it comes from a TV show, there's a tendency among critics to be skeptical," Davis says. "But he's a very strong vocalist, and the people at the forefront of the black-music community are eager to be involved, which is totally atypical from any kind of contest-winner stigma."
"We're doin' covers to appeal to the audience that voted me into the position that I'm in," Studdard says. "But also we're tryin' to do songs that appeal to everybody else. Not to break away but just to do stuff different so I can be an artist, rather than just being the American Idol. Because I don't wanna be just that. I wanna be Ruben Studdard."
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He is, of course, more complex than the "velvet teddy bear" image created by American Idol. He's a church boy who keeps in his head a list of his favorite nightclubs in L.A., Miami, Washington, D.C., and New York. He's a member of Phi Mu Alpha, one of the premier music fraternities in the world. He rebounded from his parents' painful divorce when he was eighteen. He's unsure of exactly why he won American Idol and sometimes feels exploited by the show, but he's headlining the thirty-nine-city Pop-Tarts Presents American Idols Live Tour and getting $5,000 a show. He's paid not just for singing each night but also for spending his days sitting around hotels, interacting with fans at mandatory meet-and-greets, doing interviews and living out of his Louis Vuitton suitcases for weeks on end with very little private time. "I look at it like a job," he says. "I get up and go to work every day -- just bein' Ruben is my job. It's a good job, but it's a job."
It's a little after 3 p.m., and the twenty-five-year-old Studdard is waddling through the back hallways of Pittsburgh's Mellon Arena, his feet always three feet apart, their orbits never coming anywhere near each other. He finds the Idol boys' dressing room, opens a bag of potato chips, slides onto the couch and hunkers down sideways. Studdard is six feet four and, he says, currently three hundred and sixty pounds. His thighs are the size of infants, and his stomach bulges like there's a keg inside him. Whenever Idol Kimberly Caldwell jumps atop him, which she does quite often, it looks as if she's trying to hug a hill. He may be nearing an unhealthy state, but he's unconcerned. "I am what I am," he says with a shrug.
He may soon be even more. He consumes potato chips constantly, eats Taco Bell beef chalupas with hot sauce plus a couple of Taco Supremes at midnight and never misses a dessert. When it's time to eat, he says, "Let's graze." His mother is worried. "I'm concerned about his weight," says Emily Studdard. "But it's gonna take Ruben to do it." She pauses, a bit sad. "I just wanna see him healthy."
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The other black Idol guys on the tour, Rickey Smith and Charlie Grigsby, stroll into the dressing room and soon are laughing with Studdard about the days when their families were on welfare and they had to eat government cheese. A discussion about how hard it was to grill the government cheese moves on to government bologna, government cornflakes and government peanut butter. In walks Clay Aiken. His eyes twinkle even when his brow is furrowed. He's the only white male in the group, and he has no idea what they're talking about. Studdard explains to him that welfare isn't just food stamps, it's also foodstuffs. "That's the best cheese ever," Studdard says. "It don't wanna melt, though. It stay hard, but that's good eatin'."
By 7:20, the dressing room is empty except for Studdard. He goes onstage last, so he doesn't start getting dressed until Grigsby, the first performer, hits the stage. Everyone else is ready to go, but Studdard is lying on the couch with his personal DVD player, singing along with Kirk Franklin in concert like he's back in a pew. Aiken smooths in wearing a white dress shirt and brown pants and says, "Ruben, I need you." Studdard glances up, and without a word hoists himself up from the couch, stands face to face with Aiken and carefully knots Aiken's purple tie like a helpful older brother. This happens every night. "I can tie my tie," Aiken says later, "but I just can't do the small knot. I make a huge knot. We were on the show, and he was trying to teach me, and I couldn't get it, so he said, 'Fine, let me just do it.' So now it's a ritual, and we don't do the show without it."
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Once Studdard is dressed, the bodyguards come back to lead him out to the stage. Studdard pulls one of them to the side. "There's too many sports teams in this town for there not to be fine women," he says in a low, conspiratorial voice.
"What're you looking for?" the bodyguard says. "Gimme a description."
"I like 'em fine. Remember the girl I brought back in Columbus?"
"You want light-skinned?"
"Remember the girl from the party? Like that."
"I understand." But no girls end up backstage tonight.
(Excerpted from RS 929, August 21, 2003)