Over the past couple of years Usher Raymond's career has taken off, making him one of the most popular artists in music today. His most mature and chart topping work came from his 2004 album Confessions, which spawned hit after hit. Usher started this transition from teen pop star to R&B artist with his third album 8701. This was the very album which Usher was promoting when he was coming to town for the 8701 Tour. This was a good chance to meet a great pop star so we made plans to try and hopefully meet Mr. Raymond.

       We got off to a bad start by leaving later than planned and the bad luck was a trend that filtered out throughout the day for us. Both of us finally arrived at the hotel and noticed a big line close by his bus. Why on earth would there be a crowd of people lined up outside of a hotel? It surely wasn't a line to get reservations to stay in the hotel. It turned out that Usher decided to do a little signing session right outside of the hotel!

       This of course freaked us out and we quickly ran over to the end of the line. Looking over the sea of heads we saw Usher himself, squeezed between two bodyguards, signing autographs! This was so awesome but unfortunately for us, this just wasn't our day to shine.

        One of Usher's security guards walked over and said that the line was cut off, forcing us out of line. We couldn't believe it and out of all people it had to be us, the autograph collectors. There were so many people in line that didn't even care about meeting him. They were just walking on the street and said, "Hmmm, might as well meet whoever the hell this is". All we could do was watch him sign away, yes we had truly entered the portal to autograph hell.

       Usher took care of the rest of the line, so Earl quickly made his move to try and ask for an autograph. Security kept saying that Usher would sign no more autographs and sure enough he didn't, despite our best efforts! Usher held his head low and made his way into the tour bus, crap. This was such a heartbreaking defeat, especially because we knew that if we arrived just a couple of minutes earlier that we could've met Usher!