When your name is Usher Raymond IV, scoring an invite to attend almost any event on the planet is a given. Well, almost. There are some events that Usher has to sit out of, even though he would like to be front-and-center. The father-of-four said on a recent episode of the Club Shay Shay Podcast that his kids don’t want him to attend their events because he’s famous.
Although the 45-year-old father wholeheartedly understands, it is still a pretty bitter pill to swallow for him because, he wants to “be there.”
“My kids – sometimes, they don’t want me to come,” he told podcast host Shannon Sharpe on the episode. “They don’t want me to be at their basketball game or their recital, or they wanna be very, very low-key, ‘cause they don’t want that energy.”
“They don’t want, ‘Oh Dad walked into the room and took…’ ” he said, as Sharpe added, “All their focus off me.”
“And it’s hard, because I try my hardest to have that empathy, but I wanna be there,” Usher went on to say.
In the interview, the upcoming Super Bowl half time show headliner admitted that there have been “countless times” where he was “at the back of the room, quiet” making an attempt to “keep myself as small as possible and be as quiet as I possibly can” so that he could support his kids without taking away from their moment.
Additionally in the interview, Usher also talked how his children’s sense of normalcy differs from other children, even from himself when he was their age. Sharpe questioned the “OMG” singer, “how his kids can be ‘normal’ when they come home to a ‘six-car garage’ and a ‘nanny, maid and chef’.”
Usher responded, “That is a harsh reality, which is more the reason why you gotta be harder on them. But mindful that their normal is different than our normal … the expectation is actually higher. That’s the one thing that I have empathy for my children.”
As mentioned, Usher is a father to four children. The “Yeah!” singer shares his two eldest sons, Usher “Cinco” V, 16, and Naviyd Ely, 15, with ex-wife, Tameka Foster. The multi-Grammy-winner shares his youngest children, daughter Sovereign Bo, 3, and son Sire Castrello, 2, with his longtime girlfriend Jenn Goicoechea.
Photo: Usher Instagram; Tameka Foster Instagram