Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
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This episode contains candid and explicit conversations about sex. So if you're listening with children around, you may want to wait until later.
Campsite Media.
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robomed. And I'm Vanessa Gregoriotis. So when I was growing up, one singer really soundtracked my middle school existence. Usher. Whether it was Yeah or My Boo or Confessions Part Two, Usher was everywhere in the early 2000s. You couldn't turn on the radio without hearing his silky smooth tenor crooning over an R&B beat. Usher's music was this stomach-churning mix of sex and love and longing, one that made you feel something somewhere. Since then, Usher's never quite topped the peak of his 2004 album, Confessions, but he's since come back around in our culture as a nostalgia act, first with a Las Vegas residency, and then as the halftime performer at the Super Bowl.
The National Football League welcomes you to the Apple Music Super Bowl 58 Halftime Show. The Apple Music Administration advises the following performances rated U may cause singing, dancing, sweating, gyrating, and possible relationship issues.
But there's a dark speck on his lover boy image, one that's pretty uncomfortable to talk about. And that's the fact that when he was a teenager, Usher was sent to live with Diddy to learn about the music business. And ever since Diddy's indictment on sex trafficking charges in September 2024, Usher's connection to Diddy has been back in the spotlight. Now, to be clear, Usher has not been accused of anything in relation to the Diddy case. Diddy himself has denied all accusations against him and pleaded not guilty. He's currently in jail in New York after being denied bail. But Vanessa herself actually wrote the first major profile of Usher in which he discussed his relationship with Diddy. Back in 2004, Usher was going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone and Vanessa was in his house in Georgia, talking to him about living with Diddy. Hardest days of my life, he said of that time. I had to knuckle up, figure shit out in New York by my motherfucking self. There was always girls around. You'd open a door and see somebody doing it or several people in a room having an orgy.
You never knew what was going to happen. To discuss Usher's complicated legacy and his place in culture today, we called up Jasmine Hughes. She recently wrote a New York Magazine cover story about Usher that explored his tangled mess of sex, spirituality, and swag in the funniest way. Her writing is seriously fantastic. I mean, this is how she begins one paragraph. "'I am, in front of anyone else, a lesbian, but it's 85 degrees and we're in Atlanta and I'm in front of Usher.'" So let's get to that conversation with Jasmine. We're here with Jasmine Hughes, a brilliant writer and editor who won the 2023 National Magazine Award for Profile Writing. And most recently, she wrote an incredible profile of Usher for New York Magazine called Usher's Art of Seduction. Now, Vanessa, of course, also wrote a profile of Usher, not to age Vanessa, but almost 20 years ago at this point for Rolling Stones.
Not to age her, but let's do it anyway.
You've had an illustrious career. But I will say that Jasmine Hughes's profile is amazing. Mine is actually back in the news for something that he said about Diddy when I was talking to him. So let's talk to Jasmine and later we're going to get to the Diddy questions, which are swirling for sure around Usher, fairly or unfairly. Yeah. Yes.
OK, so the entire conceit of this interview with Usher was that we were going on a date. And I, as I write in the story, I am a lesbian until someone's like, do you want to go on a date with Usher? And on this date, although I was sitting in front of the most handsome man I have ever seen, he was staring truly deep into my eyes. And I did not realize that my eyes and my pussy were so connected until I met Usher. But then he was just talking about himself. And I was like, oh, my God, Jasmine, you've done it again. You were on a date with a man. Usher is just some guy at the end of the day, at the end of the day. But it was certainly much more controlled than anything that you got from him.
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