R&B sensation Usher reached the top of the mountain of American musical success when he told fans that he’d be performing at the 2024 Super Bowl halftime show. 

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The set list for the event is his business, though we have some ideas. What matters now is that we sit back and consider Usher’s past. Playing the halftime show is, after all, the sort of honor that makes you think back on an artist’s career, their life, and their beginnings. When the Black Eyed Peas played the Super Bowl, the nation looked back at their days starting out in Los Angeles, wondering what might have gone wrong. When Kid Rock played Super Bowl XXXVIII, we warmly considered the basement lab where he was grown from a goatee left in a puddle of Monster Energy Drink. 

Today, it’s Usher’s turn. Here, we look at the multi-hyphenate star of The Faculty’s genesis: Where he came from, where he went, and where he spends his time now. 

Where is Usher from, and where did he go?

Born Usher Raymond IV, the man who would grow to be so famous as to demand mononymy came into this world on Oct. 4, 1978, in Dallas, Texas, birthplace of fellow musicians Nick Jonas, Meat Loaf, and two out of three of The Chicks. 

But the bright lights of Dallas couldn’t hold him for long. He would soon find himself in cosmopolitan Chattanooga, Tennessee, unanimously and consistently voted as the “American city with a name that sounds the most like a toddler impersonating a train.” Usher’s family would later move to Atlanta, Georgia when he was a teenager, seeking out new opportunities for the budding musical prodigy.

In the days that followed, Usher starred in a season of Moesha, appeared in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory as “Mercenary Number One,” and, more pertinently,became one of the biggest stars in the industry, amassing more than 300 awards and more record sales than the human mind is capable of comprehending. With success came more time spent in Los Angeles, money – so, so much money – and a real estate portfolio that would make the Monopoly Man call “bull.”

While he’s bought and sold more mansions in both Atlanta and LA than you or I will ever even be inside of, Velvet Ropeclaims that Usher (who, like Tiny Tim at the end of A Christmas Carol, did not die) currently spends the majority of his time in the Hollywood Hills thanks to his most recent acquisition: A luxury home purchased in 2022 for $3.4 million – or roughly six percent of the budget of Under Siege 2.