In addition to recording his new album, Usher just completed his second season as a mentor on NBC’s talent show The Voice.

“I don’t think I’ll battle him in the studio.” “He’s a lyricist,” says Usher, diplomatic about the showdown. The contest was not close Drake’s moves haven’t improved much since his excellent bar mitzvah motions he possessed as a child (as documented on a YouTube video and viral GIFs).

At Drake’s OVO festival this summer, the Toronto-bred hip-hop maestro playfully challenged Usher to a dance-off. Of course, as one of the most successful record-selling artists of all time – he has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide – Usher has his own place in the lineage of pop stars, with the likes of Canadian superstars Justin Bieber and Drake being followers of his. “And when I say ‘stand,’ I mean standing on the shoulders of the people who paved the way before me.” “Every bit of who I am is a product of where I’ve been able to stand,” continues the eight-time Grammy winner. “My plan has never been to fill James Brown’s shoes, or Jackie Wilson’s shoes or Frankie Lymon’s or any of the performers who sang and danced. “My plan was never to fill Michael Jackson’s shoes,” says Usher, who recalls the ACC moment as a “tender” one. It was a meant as a tribute to a King of Pop who had died less than a year earlier, but was construed as an audacious attempt to take his place. In 2010, on his last tour, the performer planted a pair of glittering kicks on the stage of Toronto’s Air Canada Centre and asked the audience if he had permission to wear them. If Usher is set to embrace his bass-thumping inner Bootsy Collins, it marks a departure from his past worship of dancing-shoe singers. My new show does call for me to play the bass or to pick up instruments.” “This will be a different musical experience. “In the past, I’ve chosen to play the songs as you know them, as they were recorded,” says Usher. 1, with dates in Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton to follow. The UR Experience begins at Montreal’s Bell Centre, on Nov. Usher was speaking earlier this week from his home in Atlanta, about his uncompleted and yet-to-be titled eighth studio album and about his first tour in three years.

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