Usher Raymond IV is a worldwide music legend and a record-shattering artist. It is his god-given talent for singing, but also what he does with his body when he performs, that has him up there in the pantheon of the best of the best. Sometimes, though, what happens behind the scenes and in his personal life is just as interesting as what happens in front of the microphone and on the stage. The Grammy Awards count is up to eight, but once, back in the day, he was with the notorious Sean “Diddy” Combs, and his life was way more exciting, at least for a while.
At just 13, Usher was thrown into the chaotic world of New York City, which is a far cry from the Dallas and Atlanta streets he knows. This was not just any …
Apprenticeship, that is. Usher was sent to the much-talked-about “Puffy Flavor Camp,” an infamous boot camp led by Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy, and during which kids who wanted to be in the music business learned Combs’s methods for crazy success.
Usher told Rolling Stone that during this period of his life, he was soaking up an atmosphere where “sex is so hot in the industry.” He painted a picture that, for even the most die-hard fans of *Billions*, would be hard to visualize let alone understand through the eyes of a teenage boy on the edge of becoming a star. His was a world where you might be hanging out with some folks, and simply for the sake of it, they would burst into song and dance. And through these scenes of music and fun, you might imagine or even accidentally stumble upon, people having sex.
**The Legacy of Whispering—Usher’s Choice and the Echoes of an Unforgettable Past** Usher swims, as it were, in the waters of the Music World. For him, this is a paradox. He has been given so much opportunity, and yet, so much of it feels to him like a sinking moral ship. In a visit years later to the Howard Stern Show, Usher admitted that he would never dream of sending his kids to any ‘camp’ akin to the one where he spent part of his youth—yet the awareness of such a painful past colors his present imagination and gives rise to music bursting with deeper resonance.
Even with Diddy’s alleged faults looming overhead, Usher has come through for the National Football League and the Super Bowl like a phoenix, with the sort of unparalleled finesse that’s led many to call this revered R&B figure a modern-day deity. He’s emerged as a star more brilliantly than perhaps anyone else from those early ’90s Bad Boy days, and given the recent serious legal troubles of his young first-time friend/mentor turned figure of controversy, it’s almost odd how we’re talking about him now as a Super Bowl savior of sorts.
**The Silence Is Loud—What Usher Isn’t Saying During Diddy’s Legal Trouble** Since Diddy’s much-ballyhooed arrest, Usher has remained frustratingly tight-lipped about the whole affair, even as it has drawn in figures like J. Cole and 50 Cent. Usher’s not in legal trouble like Diddy, of course, but the gawking public can’t help but track his every move. … It’s definitely giving fans of the two a lot to speculate about, especially in light of recent actions surrounding Usher’s Twitter account.
**Mentor and Mentee: The Enigmas of Their Connection—More Than Just Music?** Usher’s link to Diddy is not singular in the stellar orbit of talent that Combs has cultivated over the years. The intrigue swirls not just around Usher but also around his fellow Diddy protégé, Justin Bieber, who has in recent days been subjected to a reevaluation of his own youth and the videos that captured it. And why not? Bieber’s comeback calculatedly reconstructs his own narrative of youthful innocence lost; after all, he’s a couple of years younger than Usher and several years younger than the 34 he looks.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense can afford to let distractions cloud the main event in the high-profile trial of the moment. Usher—an artist who has sold over 75 million records worldwide—is one of the higher-profile figures to testify in the drawn-out proceedings stemming from the widespread accusations against R&B singer and songwriter R. Kelly. But would Usher’s real-life experiences ultimately have any bearing on the final verdict rendered against Kelly?
As Usher’s early troubles play out against the background of a newly illuminated Diddy, the public looks at Usher and tries to read either a tell-all or a well-orchestrated silence. What comes across with crystal clarity, however, is that this narrative moves beyond the realm of mere pop culture and dives right into deeper questions of role models, exploitation, and survival in a world where young stars are often thrust into the deep end with barely any time to get their bearings and figure out whether to swim or be swept away in a tide that’s teeming with both excess and intrigue.
What is certain is that Usher’s tale of transformation from teenage neophyte at Diddy’s camp to living legend will reverberate in the pages of music history for a long time to come. It is a story that carries a lot of weight in odd twists and turns, and it is just as strange as it is guileful. For a narrative that has so many things going for it, I think it is going to be Usher’s music—his beats and lyrics—that will tell the story most effectively.
