“Are you ready for what I have to show you?” asked Usher, soon after taking to the stage this past Sunday evening at a mostly-full Wukesong Stadium. He had just unzipped his jacket in achingly theatrical fashion: a hint at the many innuendos that were to follow over the course of the show. Overall, the audience of appreciative young listeners was treated to a smooth, professional tour of the Prince of R&B’s catalogue of hits.

The much ballyhooed duet with American-Chinese pop star Leehom Wang (Wang Li Hong) was warmly greeted by the audience, though Usher’s supposed singing in Mandarin didn’t come through particularly clearly - he could have been singing “Doo Ba Doo Wop” for all I could make out.

Leading with “Caught Up” and finishing with recent dance-floor standard “OMG”, Usher took the crowd on his personal musical journey from teen heartthrob to global pop star. The set cruised swiftly through an impressively long list of hits, ranging from 1997’s swooning “You Make Me Wanna” through to 2004’s crunkified party favorite “Yeah!” and beyond. The newer songs from his latest album, “Raymond Vs. Raymond”, also held up reasonably well, in part bolstered by the excellent work of his four-piece band on drums, guitar and synths. A Neptunes-like sliding vamp and stabs of guitar distortion leant a funky edge to “U Don’t Have to Call,” while the extended instrumental dance routine passages were cleverly syncopated and percussively lock-tight.

Usher was regularly accompanied on stage by a half-dozen dancers. The young women, in all-black cat suits, effectively acted out the singer’s endless romantic dramas while giving the men in the audience some eye-candy to help offset any potential loss of dignity experienced as their wives and girlfriends melted before Usher’s effortless playboy appeal. The dancers offered up enough perfectly-synchronized gyrations, spins and step-dancing to give the legion of young pop-and-lockers in the audience months of new practice material, and provided handy distraction while the show’s star went about his multiple, rapid wardrobe changes.

Chairs were a common dance prop, as was Usher’s silver microphone stand, which at one point he laid down horizontally then hovered over, before proceeding to perform push-ups/vertical thrusts again, much to the audience’s delight. Moments later, he knelt besides the base of the stand, crotch pointing in the same direction as the microphone. While it was left to the audience to determine what sort of leisurely exercise the recently-divorced stud was simulating, I imagine few were left confused.

All of that pent-up ‘energy’ that young female fans were carrying was given several opportunities to release, as when Usher bound out to acquaint himself more intimately with those in the stands. Occasionally, he would throw various accessories into the crowd (hats, scarves, used hankies) but it was on a celebratory lap during “Yeah!” that his many ladies finally got a chance to get personal with their baby-faced Apollo and his provocatively-flashed six-pack abs.

Or so they thought. Surrounded by a human tank comprised of one massive foreign bodyguard and a number of death-glaring, warning-screaming local security guards, the lap was more Chang An Avenue official procession than Hollywood meet-and-greet. One woman who came close to touching him from behind was swiftly tackled and launched back towards the seats.

“I came out here to show appreciation to all of my Chinese fans,” Usher had announced rather robotically, standing in MJ-like eagle pose--legs together, arms outspread. At one point, for no apparent reason, he also began to talk like Michael, an artistic muse to whom Usher’s slick moon-walking and regular crotch-grabbing maneuvers have always clearly referenced. Perhaps it was an indirect tribute to the recently-deceased King of Pop. But more so than Michael, this evening was an opportunity for fans of local R&B-inflected stars like Jay Chou and Leehom Wang to appreciate Rhythm and Blue’s at its most raw: the non-covert sexual vigor of the dance routines, the sweltering desire that Usher’s drawn-out falsetto coos evoked during the slow jams.

“This is the first time that a Chinese artist and an American artist have performed together,” Usher announced on-stage together with Wang. I’m not sure if that’s true. But in a country where the boundaries of popular culture and youth sexuality continue to change at an accelerating pace, his performance offered a place-marker in China’s mainstream musical evolution. Where a mere 10 years ago, Chou and Wang’s hybridized R&B-Mandopop introduced local listeners to a style so distinctly non-traditional Chinese, their seeds have now blossomed to the point where a stadium of young Beijingers are singing along word-for-word and getting down to the prince of the genre.

You may also want to read:

• Interview: Usher Talks Music, Biz and Cavaliers

• Usher v. Usher: The King of R&B Comes to Beijing