Usher and his creative team began tossing around ideas for his next album, they had one goal in mind: to get his swagger back. “I had checked out,” the singer acknowledges. “I went all the way into being super husband and super dad, thinking, ‘I’ve got to be serious all the time. I’ve got to be the man.’ I put my swagger down for a minute, but I didn’t throw it away. Now it’s time to get it back.” Flashing a devilishly engaging smile, Usher exudes steely determination as he shifts position on a rehearsal room couch at Centerstaging in Burbank, Calif. Clad all in black-from tennis shoes to the shades he never removes during an hourlong interview-the singer is there to rehearse for his Feb. 27 performance at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. His quiet fortitude on a rainy afternoon becomes all the more compelling-and fitting-when it’s learned the room he’s rehearsing in was last used by Michael Jackson while mapping his own anticipated return on the This Is It tour. “It wasn’t intentional,” Usher says when asked about the coincidence. “But I love being in this space. That same energy is still here; it lingers. All I’ve ever wanted as an artist is to appeal to as wide an audience as Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson.”

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