This Sunday, February 11, 2024, the United States prepares to face one of the most notable sporting events on its annual calendar. The LVIII edition of Super Bowl will be held in Paradise (Nevada), specifically at the Las Vegas Raiders stadium, Allegiant Stadium. The two NFL teams that will face each other are the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. However, the sporting spectacle is not the only thing that raises great expectations. Like every year, so does the halftime performance, which this year will star the singer Usher.
Probably, for many, this artist born on October 14, 1978 in Dallas (Texas) needs no introduction. At 45 years old, he can boast of having one of the most successful professional careers in the music industry worldwide. Today you can continue listening to songs like Dj Got Us Fallin’ in Love or Without You in clubs around the world. In addition, Usher Raymond IV – that’s his full name – has collaborated with artists of the stature of Beyoncé, David Guetta, Alicia Keys and Justin Bieber, among many others. Indeed, Usher was one of the driving forces behind the Canadian singer’s professional career, and they maintain a close relationship.
The career of the artist, named by many experts as the ‘King of R
What few know about him is his personal life. Already as a child, the artist lived one of the hardest experiences of his life, since his father abandoned him when he was just a child, leaving him with his mother, Jonnetta Patton. His beginnings in music were at the age of 9, when his mother advised him to join the local church choir. “The first time I stepped on stage was in a church, in my hometown… I never really knew what I wanted to do until I grew up…” he revealed to TMF in 1997.
After a while, the family decided to move to Atlanta. There, Usher met L.A. Reid, a famous producer who introduced him to the industry. His debut album, called Usher, came out in 1994 and, at first, was not very successful because he was surrounded by controversy for dealing with adult themes at only fifteen years old. However, My Way, his second release, caught everyone’s attention. Finally, in 2001 he ended up catapulting to the top, with his album 8701. His fame came to him at the early age of sixteen.
During his professional career he has received more than forty awards, eight of them in the form of Grammys, and he even has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the city of stars, Los Angeles (California). After a season away from music, this week the artist has returned in style. His new album, Coming Home, was released this February 9. This Sunday he faces a bigger challenge, the Super Bowl halftime. The truth is that the event is already familiar to him, since he already performed at the event in 2011.
As we said, his personal life has not been free of scandals, and it has also been highly covered in the media. Among the romances of the My Boo singer, the relationship he had with the singer Chilli Thomas and the model Naomi Campbell is known. On the other hand, he married for the first time in 2007 with Tameka Foster, with whom he had two children: Usher V and Naviyd Ely. However, after two years as husband and wife, they broke up their relationship. The artist has always been very dedicated to his children.
In 2019 he began dating Jennifer Goicoechea, a music executive at A
An example of this is his song I Cry, which the artist wrote after experiencing an emotional moment with his two oldest children while watching a movie together. “I’m not shy about being honest with my children about the fact that I had no relationship with my father,” he said in an interview with WPGC 95.5 FM radio. “And there was a moment between a son and a father and it affected me: I started crying. Then, my children look at me and say, ‘Are you crying?!'” he continued to explain. “It’s okay to cry,” he responded then.
As we said, the singer knows first-hand what it means to be a public figure. The Climax interpreter faced a scandal that would turn his career upside down. It was the year 2017 when several sexual partners sued him for having infected them with herpes, a venereal disease of which he had been diagnosed between 2009 and 2010. They accused him of lacking caution. This made his partner at the time, Grace Miguel, decide to divorce after marrying him in 2016. Despite everything, she has managed to pull herself together to return to the top.
