HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Usher is turning to a familiar face — his mom — to handle his business affairs once again.
"Usher has dissolved his management arrangement with Benny Medina and has re-engaged Jonnetta Patton as his manager," the R&B star's rep said in a statement Wednesday.
According to sources, the 29-year-old Usher has been frustrated with the lackluster sales surrounding his latest release, "Here I Stand." The album had first-week sales of 433,000 copies, which paled in comparison to the 1.1 million units sold in the first week for his previous release, "Confessions," in 2004.
"People have been telling Usher to listen to his mother," a source recently told the New York Daily News. "Nobody knows how to sell him better than she does."
However, Medina says much has changed since "Confessions" was released.
"With an artist like Usher, the bar is set really high," he said in a statement to People magazine. "Whether it was management, marketing or the music, we achieved a number one single and a number one album. It is a completely new day and time in music now. In four years, his audience, demographic, and musical direction has changed. Records like Lil Wayne's 'Lollipop' are the type of phenomena that 'Yeah' was in 2004. I had a great time and we parted ways amicably."
Usher and his mother previously split in May 2007. At the time, there was much speculation that the changing of the guard had to do with friction between her and his soon-to-be wife, Tameka Foster.
"I decided to not fire, not get rid of, but to give [my mother] the ultimate compliment — to retire her to be a full-time grandmother," he explained to Vibe last month.
"My mother and I decided to change her situation, together," he continued. "There was a conversation. I didn't write her a letter or pink slip her."
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