Usher: Mentor and Mogul

(Success) — Usher Raymond IV carries a small silver humidor filled with the finest cigars. He owns a pair of every Air Jordan shoes released. He has a stable of luxury cars, owns homes on multi-acre properties and can’t show his face in public without inciting rabid, screaming fans. Over a nearly 20-year career, he has earned pop superstardom. But in the late ’80s, in a room full of rowdy kids at the Boys & Girls Club in Chattanooga, Tenn., 11-year-old Usher was just hanging out, shooting hoops, and learning how to be a leader rather than another statistic from his impoverished neighborhood. The young man, destined to become a multi-platinum recording artist, actor and businessman, needed the safe haven of that after-school club to keep him off the streets and away from potential dangers: drugs, gangs, violence.

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