Two years ago, Cliff Lovette was doing legal work for Usher. Now the 54-year-old Atlanta entertainment attorney is practicing law out of his basement and collecting food stamps.

At the top of his game, he worked for LeFace Records in Atlanta as senior vice president for business and legal affairs, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. When it moved to New York he opened an entertainment law firm in Buckhead, making $250,000 a year representing well-known performers including Usher and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes.

But Lopes died in a car crash in Honduras in 2002 and Usher reconfigured his management team, eliminating Lovette and others, a few years later. Meanwhile, the music industry has been hard-hit by the advent of digital recordings of tunes that can be shared over the Internet. He and his wife divorced, and he has been caring for their children while she was with a dying parent in another state, which cuts into his available work time. Recently, his practice has been bringing in about $1,500 monthly.

He is hopeful about the future, however, according to the newspaper article, and wants his children to look back on their current situation as a life lesson.

"I want them to understand that you have these struggles," he says, "and you get through. They don't have to bring you down."