If you've ever suspected that David Beckham is, well, not too bright, then you won't be too shocked to hear that his favourite musician is Usher Raymond. Perhaps it's not too surprising - just like the blond Essex bombshell, there's now a lingering suspicion that Usher's best days are behind him. Reportedly furious that Justin Timberlake has overtaken him in the credibility stakes, the baby-faced soul merchant has dropped the nice guy image on his fourth album - with pretty disastrous results. On the title track, for example, he casually tells us that he's got one of his two girlfriends pregnant but is now determined to do the 'manly' thing and let the other know what he's done. Not that this sort of behaviour seems to have affected his pulling power - he spends much of the rest of the album boasting about how he's having to fight them off with a stick. None of this, however, can compensate for a lack of decent songs, or the fact that Usher's hip-hop schtick has lost whatever charm it once had. Best avoided.
