Usher, the 29-year-old R&B star, has always been a great kid. I met him a decade ago when he was starting out. He's never been anything but gracious and polite.
Since he got together with stylist Tameka Foster, nine years his senior, he's had nothing but grief. Foster has three kids from her first marriage, and she had one with Usher in November, a boy they named Usher Raymond Jr.
Foster's been played in the media as the devil incarnate. For one, there is the constant rumor that she's a Scientologist, and that she married Usher to bring him into the sect.
Is she? I asked her the other night at L.A. Reid's Grammy party. Foster, who's got a good sense of humor, heartily laughed out loud. "Honey, I can't even spell it! No, I am not a Scientologist."
Usher added: "I'm friends with Tom Cruise, so people think that's what happened." He did host a fundraiser for one of Cruise's Scientology-related schemes, perhaps unwittingly. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt. It sounds a little like Madonna and her Kabbalah fundraiser using Gucci as a host.
