Usher Raymond IV was born on October 14, 1978 in Atlanta, Georgia. Usher started singing for his church choir. Usher is not only a singer, but also an actor, a composer, a producer, a businessman, and a philanthropist. At the age of thirteen, when he was auditioning for a star search contest, he was spotted by an A&R representative from LaFace Records. After a formal audition with Usher, they signed him on. His debut album, when he was just 15, ‘Call me a Mack’, was released in late 1993 and was listed in the R&B charts.
Usher became a popular star only after the release of ‘My Way’, whose co-executive producers were L.A. Reid, Babyface and Dupri. One of the songs from this album “You Make Me Wanna” stayed on top in the R&B/Hip-Hop charts for 11 weeks and on the pop charts for 7 weeks. He released two more albums; “Live” in 1999 and “8701” in 2001-2002. On March 3, 2004, Usher’s album “The confession” was released. This album broke the record set by R. Kelly by selling 1.1 million copies in first week itself. This resulted in a huge success of the album. Till today, 20 million copies of his albums have been sold in US. To continue his successful lineup, Usher released ‘Burn’ and ‘Confession part II’.
Usher has also such a duet with Alicia Keys called ‘My Boo’, the album of which remained at the number one position for 28 weeks. Usher has won many awards such as two MTV Awards for the ‘Best Male R&B Artist’, five Grammy awards, and many lucrative titles. |
