Usher and his family have endured profound heartbreak. In a revealing cover story, the 45-year-old star delves into his life’s highs and lows.
In 2012, Usher and his ex-wife, Tameka Foster, 53, received devastating news: her son, Kile, 11, (from a previous marriage with Ryan Glover), was involved in a tragic boating accident.
“I received the call back then, she was in Italy at the time, and I chartered a private plane to get her home as fast as I could because she was just so distraught,” he recalls of being there for Foster, who he’d divorced in 2009 after two years of marriage.
“We were not even together at the time. But I was like, ‘Okay, let me try and be of help to her and help her as much as I possibly can’. It’s a real hard thing to lose a child.”
“It hurt me,” Usher reflects. “Kile was an amazing child. For the time that he was here, he was a great influence. There’s not a day that his brothers and his mother don’t think about him.”
Usher and Foster are parents to sons Usher V, 16, and Naviyd, 15. Regarding their co-parenting dynamic, Usher acknowledges, “I’m not going to lie, we have more difficult days than we have great ones.”
In 2013, Usher V, then 5, nearly drowned in the singer’s pool.
“That was one of the hardest days of my life,” he says, “and I’m certain one of the hardest days of hers.”
He adds, “To know that I would have a similar situation that could have just taken my son’s life. It’s like I understand and have great empathy for what both she and Ryan, her ex-husband, had to deal with because I’ve experienced a portion of it in real-time.”
He and Foster were amidst a lengthy custody dispute, and the tragic incident heightened tensions. However, a judge ruled that there was no negligence on Usher’s part.
“I love my boys, and I would never do anything to compromise or endanger them,” he emphasizes.
These days, ‘we are raising our sons together,’ he shares about partnering with Foster, who stars on WE TV’s new reality show Bold & Bougie.
“It’s a process,” he adds, “but ‘we’re doing our best.’”