A choir boy from Chattanooga who became a decade's biggest chart act

Usher Raymond IV was born in Dallas in 1978 and spent most of his childhood in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His mother, Jonnetta Patton, steered him into the local church youth choir at the age of nine, and it was his grandmother who first noticed how well he could sing. When the family wanted a bigger stage for him, they moved to Atlanta.

There he joined a local R&B group called NuBeginning at twelve, one of five members, and the group recorded ten songs in 1991. Their only album came out regionally and by mail order, and only reached national shelves in 2002, once its famous member had become a star. His mother felt her son was better off alone and pulled him out at thirteen, later calling the experience bad. His own self-titled debut followed in 1994, when he was fifteen.

The breakthrough came with My Way in 1997 and its first Hot 100 number one, “Nice & Slow.” “You Make Me Wanna” belongs to that period. The albums that followed built the case: 8701 gave him “U Remind Me” and “U Got It Bad,” and Confessions in 2004 produced four consecutive US number ones and remains the best-selling album by a Black artist of the 21st century. Billboard named him the number-one Hot 100 artist of the 2000s.

The run did not stop. “OMG” in 2010 became his ninth number one, which put him among the few artists to top the chart in three consecutive decades. He has sold over 100 million records, won eight Grammys, coached on The Voice, and drew 123 million US viewers to his Super Bowl halftime show in 2024. Outside music he started a charity, Usher's New Look, in 1999, and helped manage a young singer called Justin Bieber.