To many people around the world Usher is a sort of lovable R&B singer who can dance like someone's removed his bones and replaced them with live eels, but deep down Usher is the sort of law-breaking criminal who could made the dead shudder.
In theory at least, that is. In reality Usher was caught driving his car 33 miles an hour faster than he was supposed to in July, and that was it. No Paris Hilton-style drink-driving, no Mel Gibson-style bigotry and no Nicole Richie-style being off his face on pot and prescription medication and heading up the motorway into oncoming traffic. Nope – Usher just drove his car a bit faster than he should have done. And believe us when we tell you that the sentencing is just as mundane as you'd expect for a crime as dull as his.
In the urban music world, a car is a crucial accessory if you want to be taken seriously. A car can be somewhere to keep your drugs, a car can be somewhere nice and comfortable to get shot or – if you're DMX – a car can be something you can crash in an airport car park before you tell everyone that you did it on purpose because you're actually in the FBI. On the other hand, if you happen to be rubber-limbed R&B crooner Usher, a car is something that you drove slightly too fast six months ago.
Poor old Usher hasn't been having the best of times lately. Where once he could reduce girls to quivering urine-stained foetuses just by getting his tummy out and singing that song about popping his collar – which is presumably some kind of osteopathic practise – now Usher is the man who loses £50,000 in a hotel and, ever since his sore throat cast him out of Chicago, is officially not as good at singing as David Hasselhoff and Claire Sweeney. And now Usher is an occasional car-speeder too, as E! Online reports:
The Grammy winner was found guilty of speeding in a Georgia court
Tuesday stemming from an incident last summer in which police clocked
him doing 103 mph in a 70 mph zone. The 28-year-old "Yeah!"
singer and Georgia native appeared in Bartow County Probate Court to
face the citation he received on July 4, when cops pulled over his 2005
Range Rover SUV on Interstate 75. Judge Mitchell Scoggins issued
a $425 fine to the multmillionaire, whose full name is Usher
Raymond, and sentenced him to perform 20 hours of community service… After leaving the courthouse, Usher spent 30 minutes schmoozing with fans and signing autographs.
Great, community service. Maybe this means that Usher will get to team up with recent community service-getter and old flame Naomi Campbell so they can work their sentences off together. Perhaps Usher could use his weirdly mobile limbs to flick litter off the streets into the air, at which point Naomi Campbell could demean it at the top of her voice. We haven't really thought this through to be honest.
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Jake says
Usher is rock and roll! What next? ovedue books returned to the library?