It wasn’t all about the beatdown. There were a million errors all the way around.
The pop music business isn’t big on second chances. You get one shot, one ride — sometimes a long one and sometimes a one-hit-wonder. But what an artist (and more uniquely, their respective team) DOES with that shot is quite frankly, what separates the mid-charters from the superstars. Yet fate always plays a hand.
The few who do manifest comebacks are typically your worker-bee artists; ones who possess a massive grind that matches their massive talent level. Believe it or not this combination is incredibly rare among most “stars”. Self-destruction by way of ego is always looming over the gifted and swiftly-famous.
Over the last three years, the circumstances of “Life” have compellingly defined the careers of two of R&B’s most high-profile artists: Usher Raymond and Chris Brown. Each has capitalized on the other’s highs and lows in a truly fascinating way when you take a step back to examine how their individual paths have merged and diverged. How the story will end nobody knows, but so far it is still quite the drama.
My first recollection of Usher was him as a teenager. Yup this was the early 90’s. He was just 15 years old with his momma manager Jonetta and a kick ass voice but no real identity yet and definitely no crossover hits. Undaunted, he was coming around the LA radio station I was co-piloting to play our programming team new tracks. The music being produced for him languished boringly below his obviously strong voice. Which is what we always told him, time and time again. Back then he was being groomed by Puffy and being in any sort of business situation with that devil is a tragedy of epic proportions for ANY recording artist — true even before the ridiculous “P Diddy Pickpocket” years. Back then Sean Combs was just starting out as a producer. And under his expert tutelage talented lil’ Usher went nowhere. But Raymond kept working on it despite all the crazy obstacles — the kid never gave up.
But after teaming up with Atlanta producer Jermaine Dupri in 1997 a song called “You Make Me Wanna” changed his destiny forever.
Fast forward a decade and 30 million in worldwide album sales. In August of 2007 Usher committed career suicide, and it wasn’t just because he got married. Heartthrobs get married all the time. But Usher went to the left to the LEFT — and to all outside appearances it looked like the boy done lost his mind. He didn’t marry some young gorgeous Hollywood-star type, the predictable outcome especially considering his long public romance with Rozanda “Chilli” Thomas from TLC. Defying his mother/manager, his fans, his confidants at the label and everyone around him who were extremely wary of the character we now know as Tameka Foster, Usher pulled a “Harold & Maude” and wed his divorced-with-three-kids stylist eight years his senior, a total head-scratcher. To make matters even more suspect, a lavish wedding was called off at the 11th hour only to proceed as a much more modest affair a few months later to everyone’s disgust– whether it was their business to feel that way or not. Everybody had an opinion and it was certifiably toxic.
In November of that same year 2007, a fresh new teenager on the scene named Chris Brown released his follow-up album after a crazy big debut with a song called “Run It”. The new album was called Exclusive and spawned two equally-huge hits, the number one record featuring T-Pain called “Kiss Kiss” and a smash ballad called “With You.” That juggernaut was followed by an epic duet featuring him and then-American Idol winner Jordin Sparks called “No Air”. Released in February of 2008, “No Air” went on to sell three million downloads and stayed in heavy rotation on pop radio for eight months straight. Brown was smokin’ hot to look at, could dance his ass off, and with Usher marrying himself into WTF obscurity, everybody assured themselves that the torch had been officially passed to Chris. He was unstoppable and doing everything right.
But what a difference just one year makes: in February 2009 after the Clive Davis Grammy Party, Chris committed his own form of career suicide. Unfortunately we all know what happened that sad night.
Meanwhile over in Usherland, the poor dude spent most of 2007 and 2008 defending his marriage to a skeptical and hostile fan base. He was now a married man and a father. His promotional tour for the 2008 album Here I Stand was a steady stream of questions asking him to justify his personal life– absurd yes, but such is the life of an entertainer. He took it all with grace and dignity, but you had to wince at the constant haterade directed towards him. It was relentless.
By May of 2009– three months after the Chris Brown implosion with Rihanna– Usher filed for divorce from Tameka.
As the year 2010 dawned on the world, Usher Raymond and Chris Brown were on virtually even ground but it was hardly solid. Chris was charged with felony assault and barely ducked incarceration, annihilated in the media as a result, and vanished from the pop airwaves as the backlash towards his deplorable actions grew. Even Oprah chimed in. Usher was going through a very public and chaotic divorce, his soon-to-be-ex and mother of his child nearly died on a plastic surgery table in Brazil, and he was in the midst of a torrid new affair with a Def Jam Records employee. Messy, messy.
While Chris had a nervous breakdown during a live broadcast and reduced to wailing tears singing “Man In The Mirror” as part of a Michael Jackson tribute on the 2010 BET Awards in June, Usher was focused and working. He caught a brick with the release of Raymond Vs. Raymond in March– a record that was touted to be a conceptual follow-up to his historic Confessions album except, unlike his romance with Chili, NOBODY was interested in Usher’s romance with Tameka, especially considering the first single was a song called “Papers”. And the album promptly stalled. So back in the lab he went to create what he calls an “extended play” section of Raymond vs Raymond called Versus that would feature seven new songs– with the best producers in the game. A month after Brown’s BET breakdown (which nabbed the headlines for weeks and got him AOL’s “Fandemonium” Award) Usher dropped the first single from that “extended play” album, the record “DJ Got Us Fallin In Love” featuring Pitbull. In the meantime he had been dominating the airwaves again with an unexpected hit single produced by Black Eyes Peas wunderkind Will I. Am called “OMG”. Will was fresh off a major victory at the 2010 Grammy Awards- winning both Best pop performance by a duo or group with the Black Eyed Peas for the anthem “I Gotta Feeling” and Best pop vocal album for the album it came from, The E.N.D. Still, RLG (RCA Label Group, the conglomerate Usher’s label now resides under) was not convinced “OMG” was a hit at first, and refused to release it or fund the extended play album until Usher got his management team straight. He did, and now he is enjoying a major, bona-fide comeback.
But its not over for Chris Brown yet. The BET Awards did provide him that extremely rare second chance. He took it, and used his own money to record a song called “Deuces,” then put it out on his own. The record is starting to make some legitimate progress at the R&B format now. This is a prime example of where the star grind has to match the star talent– Chris has been given enough rope to hang himself. How it all ends is up to him. The behind the scenes deal is his record company has taken a giant step back and currently all plans for a new album are on hold. There has been NO new recording and no solicits for music on Chris’s behalf, either. They are all waiting to see what he does on his own with this single, how the public reacts to his reinvention, and how he conducts himself cuz let’s face it, the kid has anger issues. A totally justifiable business decision if you consider the massive losses Jive Records sustained with Brown’s third album Graffiti, which promptly tanked in the wake of his personal behaviors.
However, its never a true drama without a little twist. After four years of career rivalry and inter-twining each other’s fates, Usher and Chris’s paths officially crossed on July 24th, 2010. The two took the stage together at Jamaica’s Reggae Sumfest in Montego Bay and launched into a blazing performance that made immediate headlines. Now there’s rumors flying that the two extended that new partnership to the studio and actually recorded a duet together. And so it continues. Can’t wait till the next chapter, as the journey of these two has definitely been one of the most interesting “behind the music” sagas in years.
The Smash! 