By C.E. Hanifin
Enquirer staff writer

Early in Usher's set Tuesday at U.S. Bank Arena, he sang "U Remind Me" as, one by one, four female dancers pantomimed spurning his advances.

In real life, rejection probably isn't something the R&B singer has dealt with much lately, certainly not from fans.

His current record, Confessions, is the top-selling album so far this year, and it's already spawned several chart-topping hits. In a slack touring season, The Truth Tour is selling out in many of the cities it hits, including a nearly full house in Cincinnati.

The guy's got his game down onstage, from the costume changes between each number to the pelvic grabs seemingly orchestrated right down to the curve of his fingers. The slick 90-minute production featured an elaborate multilevel stage set, complete with moving platforms on which Usher rose, descended and boogied, explosive pyrotechnics and a corps of three backup musicians and eight dancers.

Not that Usher needed a single prop - the man couldn't sidle out of his jacket without eliciting thousands of feverish screams.

With vocals and dance moves as smooth and precise as the break of his crisp white trousers onto his pristine white trainers, Usher worked through a set of sex-you-up songs and shake-that-booty dance numbers, including calculatedly soulful renditions of "U Got It Bad" and "Burn."

The crowd, which Usher kept at a boiling point for his entire show, sang along with each song and danced so energetically that the stands seemed to sway with each beat.

Usher did not perform an encore, instead earning the exclamation point in the title of his crunk-lite club smash "Yeah!" with a glitzy climax that rained confetti and glitter throughout the venue.

Opening act Kanye West, on the other hand, kept things simple, with a giant image of downtown Chicago as his backdrop and a DJ and keyboard player as his backup.

Judging by the mostly full seats before the show's official start time, the crowd of Usher fans was just as eager to see West. The rapper/producer crafted one of the year's best hip-hop albums, The College Dropout, from slices of his life on Chicago's South Side and some distinctively distorted samples, most notably fellow South Sider Chaka Khan's "Through The Fire" on his hit "Through the Wire."

Although the snarky lyrics and bomping beat of "The New Workout Plan" got the crowd stomping, the set peaked with the more subtle "All Falls Down," about a "single black female addicted to retail."

West closed with the gospel-meets-rap number "Jesus Walks." As the crowd gushed, he stood with his face and one palm uplifted toward his audience, then blew them a kiss. Sure, Usher has soul, but West's got heart.

E-mail chanifin@enquirer.com