Usher, an eight-time Grammy winner who has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide and has starred in movies and on Broadway (playing Billy Flynn in Chicago in 2006), understands that, even with a coach whose success includes a career that's been going strong for 20 years, it's about what the singer has inside. "His story was about how he balanced having kids and a marriage with having a career," Usher says. But when Kaufman was eliminated, Usher exercised an option to steal the singer for his own squad, then coached him to the title. Kaufman, a former SAT prep tutor who was fronting a soul band in Indianapolis, was initially chosen by Levine for his team. There's more to being popular than just being talented.
"I've been doing this a long time but this portion of my life is about giving. Anybody can understand making a sacrifice to achieve a goal. It's a story of compassion, of underdogs. "The story of each contestant is significant to the people watching. "This season taught me that the journey was the destination, that it was about the process," he says. The time commitment meant regular commutes between his home in Atlanta (he lives on a wooded, gated property in a neighborhood in the north-central part of the city) and Los Angeles, where the show is produced. Usher joined "The Voice" to replace CeeLo Green for the series' fourth season, then returned to replace Green again for the recently completed sixth. One contestant is eliminated each week, until there is only a single singer left. They each select the ones they consider most promising, forming a team of contestants to mentor. "The Voice" is a talent competition in which four established music stars/coaches audition dozens of singers. "It's Josh's talent, but it's also our coaching." He laughs, adding, "And I get bragging rights as the one who won, after six seasons of it ping-ponging back and forth between Adam and Blake." "For me, it was a reminder that people don't participate only because of their voice-it's the dream," Usher says, reclining in a room whose walls are filled with contemporary art and whose doors open out to a terrace, allowing him to use it as a smoking quarter. It was the first time in the show's six seasons that a singer coached by someone other than Adam Levine or Blake Shelton had won the show. Happy? On this late May afternoon, Usher is practically beaming, still basking in the glow of the finale that week of NBC's "The Voice." In his second season as a coach, Usher wound up coaching the season's winner, a soul singer named Josh Kaufman. "What is the recipe for that? Staying happy, I guess." Sitting in his Atlanta home, the 35-year-old Usher returns the compliment, marveling about the day Leonard came to watch him train (and give him tips).
When he was hitting the speed bag, I saw that he had that commitment."Īnd then, of course, there were those abs. "For an actor or a singer to play a fighter, it's about commitment. "He jumps rope better than I do," says Leonard, now a popular boxing commentator. The film is a biography of former boxing champion Roberto Duran, with Usher playing Duran's greatest opponent, Leonard. The former multi-belt boxing champion was visiting the training facility where music superstar Usher-that's Usher Raymond IV on his driver's license-was working out in preparation for his role in the upcoming movie, Hands of Stone.
Usher's washboard abs are a set of stomach muscles storied in legend and song that seem to be chiseled from volcanic rock.
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