Further evidence that Ursher is really taking this manhood thing to heart, the veteran R&B charter is debuting pictures of his son (Usher II) in the new issue of Essence. What’s more? He personally requested that acclaimed author Hill Harper play the role of interviewer.
HILL HARPER: In the last year, you got married and you’ve had a baby. Which has changed you more? USHER: They’re both linked—I can’t have one without the other. But the one thing that changed me the most is having a wife. Our child is an extension of that union.
HARPER: Why? USHER: Because now I represent what he is to become. He’s gonna admire me, he’s gonna look up to me. He’s gonna say, “I wanna be”—or he should say— “I wanna be like my father. I wanna be a man of valor. I wanna possess what my father has as a man.” To get married was a choice. To have a child is a responsibility.
HARPER: Does that new responsibility challenge you to make music that is more responsible? USHER: I started making Here I Stand before I had my son and before I was married. It was a deliberate choice to make music with substance, not just about the things that we’re accustomed to—music about being the celebrity, the player, or having the car, the girl and the bling.
HARPER: Your father wasn’t around to raise you. How do you plan to be different for your son than your father was for you? USHER: Just simply being there. I don’t judge my father because I forgave him for anything he’d ever done to hurt me unintentionally. My father and I had a very short amount of time together throughout my entire life, but the most valuable time was during his final days. He asked me to forgive him for not being there. He asked me to give him a chance, give him a shot because he loved me, and he had always loved me. But it was very difficult for him to be in the situation he was in and be the example he wanted me to follow. So he intentionally stayed away. And he was kept away from me too. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t fight it because he knew he wasn’t living right.
HARPER: What would you say to young men and women about what they should expect from a man who’s a father? What is living right as a father? How do you define that? How would that man look? USHER: That man would accept his responsibilities as a father, regardless of whether he was with the mother of the child. Men will leave a situation for several reasons. One, it’s not comfortable. It may be violent. The two of you may grow apart. But you should never abandon that responsibility, which is to be there, reading with your child, being supportive of your child’s growth. That is communicating. That is making the choice to put your child before your own vanity.
HARPER: If you could take your finger and touch your 9-month-old son, Usher V, on the head and impart some certain knowledge, what would you want him to know? USHER: First of all, I’d actually look inside myself and evaluate what I felt like I missed from my own father.
HARPER: What did you miss? USHER: Knowing that I was accepted. That I mattered. And hearing that he cared enough to put me before himself.
Meanwhile, his latest album continues to drop on the Billboard charts, spawning rumors that he’s patching things up with his mother (who didn’t attend his wedding to Tameka Foster b/c… well, she plain old didn’t like the bitch), asking her to manage him again. Late 2007 marked a management shift to Benny Medina who could in-part be credited with the album’s under promotion.
Is she finally heading back to the top of the R&B charts? You be the judge. After her literal year from hell (following a manslaughter trial and consequential not-guilty verdict), the former 90’s phenom is nearing the end of her studio sojourn, with a new album finally seeing the light of a late ‘08 release.
“The List” is another track to leak out, but this one’s the most solid effort yet. I’m not exactly expecting radio or clubs to latch on, but it’s just nice as hell to hear those lofty melodies again.
No one can ever accuse Mariah Carey of not saying some off the wall bullhanky. In the new issue of Elle, Carey misfires completely while trying to defend her marriage to youngin’ Nick Cannon.
Mariah Carey on her marriage with 27-year-old actor-rapper Nick Cannon: We really kept the whole relationship aspect of it quiet. Therefore, we didn’t really ‘date,’ you know what I mean? Because that would have been not quiet or private. I think we didn’t want to give people a chance to be like, ‘What are you doing? What are you talking about? This is so quick… are you sure?’
That’s how you do? I don’t know if it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever thought of, but I’d say most people ask “What are you doing?” for a reason. But then again the world would be a lot less interesting if people actually listened to that question, no? If Lisa Marie Presley had listened to her mother’s “What are you doing marrying Michael?”… if Britney had listened to…everyone asking her “What are you doing marrying Kevin?”
Lloyd’s camp has revealed the cover to his new album Lessons in Love. *yawn*, this is a class I’m down to skip. Never trust a man who needs that many hands to get off.
Spotted at the YBF (hip hop culture’s best blog out there, don’t be fooled by the Concrete over the sheep’s eyes), Erykah Badu is expecting her third blessing, this-time-around with producer Jay Electronica (who shared the cover of Urb with her earlier this year). The bundle of neo-soul joy will join son Seven Sirius (her son with Andre 3000), and daughter Puma Rose (with pioneering West Coast rap icon The D.O.C.).
I love Erykah for so many reasons, this being one of them– she keeps it in the art family with her romances, and you can’t say these children won’t grow up to be some of the most artistically (and marijuanically) raised kids around.
Lookin thicka than a snicka, wifey #312, Mya showed off her shape sunning herself in beautiful Barbados this past weekend. Nursing a broken foot (which sidelined her from starring in this Broadway season’s Chicago), the DC-native is working on an upcoming album after being dropped from Motown.
Forget newer acts like Estelle who aren’t getting enough shine, the bigger tragedy in the new music world are artists who’ve paid their dues, built a solid (maybe not solid-enough?) fan base, who are underpromoted, and forgotten.
No, the pop supernova that is Britney Spears won’t be locking lips with Madonna this time around (we think) but she will be appearing in a video segment for the queen’s upcoming Sticky & Sweet tour (kicking off Aug. 4th in East Rutherford, NJ).
“Britney shot some footage with Madonna yesterday that will be used during Madonna’s upcoming tour,” said the Material Momma’s rep.
Reports were floating around the net that Kanye’s record label has issued a mandatory stay in anger management. Shenanigans! Either way, Mr. West posted a nicely-toned-down post about a year-old Harper’s Bazaar picture spread they did on the ego maniac’s home–including this painting said to feature a winged Kanye among the clouds.
To put it short as Kanyely possible(don’t mean to speak in third person)…. Harper’s Bazaar came to my home, took pics, asked a lot of questions and then assumed the painting in my dining room was of me as an angel. This isn’t true and it bothered me greatly because people think I’m so so so cocky that I would have something like that. I’m sure it was an inside joke to everyone from the magazine in my home that day. People would come over my house after that and say, ” I heard about this pic of you as an angel!” I would have appreciated if Harper’s Bazaar would have put in some type of blurb to clear it up. I wanted people to see my home because I spent 2 years gutting it and was proud. I’m just a regular guy with cool stuff in his crib but instead I was made out to be Ben Stiller’s character in the movie ‘Dodgeball’ with the huge pic of him wrestling a bull in his office. Why didn’t they write that my house had no pics of me, no plaques or awards, just art.
I guess it’s bittersweet, you spend half your life trying to become larger than life and the other half trying to just live a real life again.
You know that last paragraph is gonna be on his next album, too. How dare you pull from real-life experience to form poetic prose!
And I’m confused— is he denying, or endorsing the notion that he’s featured in one of his own home’s pieces of art?
Alas, we have yet to spot Lenny Kravitz’s newest jump off Cynthia Rodriguez out and about, despite stories that she filed for divorce from Alex Rodriguez today (citing infidelity–shocker).
Rihanna is working yet-again on another music video, this time-around for her 6th single from her multi-platinum Good Girl Gone Bad, “Disturbia”. Broad was spotted sporting a raven-feathered cap, netting, and gothic makeup, so here’s to hopes that this is her most edgy video yet.
