Gentleman Usher

A visit to a fan website provides some interesting clues as to why clean cut R&B star Usher Raymond IV's second album - 1997's My Way, released when he was just 18 years old - shifted upwards of seven million units. The Internet message board is a vital safety valve for passions that might otherwise lead to spontaneous combustion: girls with names such as Shanice and Phoenicia leave frenzied missives along the lines of, 'When Usher does not have on a shirt he just make me wanna go crazy,' 'Anybody that likes Usher needs to stop because he is my man,' and, most disturbingly of all for any red-blooded male, 'I have a boyfriend, but if Usher was to ask me out, I would say, "It is over. I'm dumping you for a person that can give me anything I want".'

Sunk deep in his chair in a gloomy dressing-room (you can see why Jennifer Lopez demanded that hers be painted white), Usher Raymond IV is a much-needed epicentre of charisma.

He is possibly the only man in the world who can wear one of those hats made out of a sock and not look ridiculous, and his dazzling dungaree inspired denim and white cotton ensemble is rounded off with a diamond-encrusted wrist shackle. 'Because,' he explains with a practised grin in the soft, rounded Southern accent that testifies to his Dixie origins, 'I'm a slave to the rhythm.'

More master, it seems, than servant. 

The video to Pop Ya Collar confirmed Usher as the most electrifying dancer to tread pop music's boards since Michael Jackson in his Off the Wall pomp. 

The feline ease with which he glides across a series of car bonnets suggests a more distant source of inspiration than Jackson, in the form of the young Gene Kelly.

At the mention of Kelly, Usher nods his head enthusiastically. It turns out that a childhood friendship with the daughter of Broadway song and dance man Ben Vereen inspired a lengthy study of Kelly, as well as such other rarely cited R&B role models as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. 

The guidance of actual or surrogate family members has shaped Usher's career from the beginning. He is still managed by his mother, Jonnetta Patton, the formidable lone parent who moved him to Atlanta from Chattanooya. Tennessee, when he was 12 in search of broader showbiz horizons than were afforded by the church choir he had already outgrown. 'She showed me the difference between good and evil,' is Usher's grateful verdict on this potent maternal influence. 'My dad never did. He split when I was born.'

Knowing the difference between good and evil would have been a vital asset in Usher's daunting initiation into upper echelon showbiz. In 1992, around the time when he broke the record for the longest note ever held on MTV's Star Search, he was signed to Antonio 'LA' Reid's LaFace label and, barely into his teens, travelled north to New York and a spell as Puff Daddy's apprentice.

'Puffy,' Usher notes '.... is very flamboyant, and what you see is what you get with him. If you ever see the entourage he travels with,' Usher goes on, 'they're really rowdy. I remember when Puffy was like that - he was the head of the crowd.'

A lot of teenage boys might have gone off the rails with such a hard-living individual in loco parentis, but Usher's upbringing kept him - more or less - on the straight and narrow. 

'I might try this or that experience,' he remembers with evident satisfaction, 'but if there was something that I thought was going too far, I'd find a way to get out of it. Puffy would be saying, "Take him home: he has school tomorrow." And I'd be thinking, "Here I am, 15- years-old, out at a club on the dancefloor, wild and crazy at three in the morning, with everyone popping bottles of Moet and women throwing themselves at me...''

'The next day my tutor would say, "You've got rings round your eyes - you've been out with Puffy again".'

The New York phase of Usher's musical education came to an abrupt end when his 1994 debut album, Usher, flopped. 'The look and the style they were trying to give me were more appropriate for someone who had lived more than I had,' he admits. 'As a 15-year-old kid, I don't think I really understood what I was doing.'

Back home in Atlanta and belatedly falling victim to the ravages of puberty, Usher embarked on a programme of self-reinvention that turned out - in a straightforward physical sense, as well as careerwise - to be the making of him. 'After I lost my voice,' Usher recalls, 'my hormones were going crazy and my skin was ridiculous, but I had an amazing amount of energy. My aunt told me I was getting love handles and suggested I work out.'

Luckily, another still more understanding family member was on hand to prepare him for the inevitable consequences of his body-building endeavours. How many other pop heart-throbs can boast that their grandmother gave them their first prophylactic?

'The funniest thing was when my mother found them in my pocket and said, "What are these?" and I said, "Nanny gave them to me." She went over to her mother and said, "You gave him contraceptives?" And she said, "Hey, he's about to be 16-years-old." 

Does Usher think that growing up in largely female company has been of assistance in later life? 'I guess I had it made. My mother gave me advice - she taught me that women like to be looked in the eye - and my grandmother gave me condoms.'

Now 22, and reboarding the pop carousel full-time after broadening his career base with effective showings in a series of teen films such as The Faculty, Usher could be forgiven some feelings of apprehension about re-entering the fray. Has he ever felt himself in physical danger from his amorous fans?

'They're not actually going to tear you apart, but if they get hold of you away from your security, in the midst of their touching you and grabbing you, you are going to be scratched a little. It's bad for the rest of the people who really want to see the show, though, if you're spending your whole time struggling to get back on the stage.'

That sounds less like doing a live show than like being the victim of a shark attack.

'It can be scary,' Usher admits, 'but...' glancing with a grin at the dressing-room table, laden with packets of fresh underwear, 'I'm a daredevil.' 

-Telegraph Magazine