I will be approaching the Super Bowl the way I always do – because I don’t care about the game, and if there is any TNT content, I can catch up on Monday morning. Sunday, for me, is a 13-15 minute concert, this year headlined by Usher. And he’s taking full advantage of this gift he’s giving to the game, the audience, pop culture in general…
The album just dropped, his first as an independent artist. Coming Home is already getting rave reviews and features from Burna Boy, 21 Savage, Summer Walker, Jungkook, Latto, H.E.R., and more. A tour has also been announced with merch previews… and, and, and…
Usher is taking over. He’s already been killing it in Vegas, now he’s going to mega-launch his next era on the field on Sunday night, so people were already hyped but then they dropped the preview film for his performance yesterday and this should be a f-cking full-length movie! It’s inspired, of course, by a movie, The Hangover, but might even be funnier? With all these cameos?! Taraji P Henson, Ludacris, and Lil Jon are the new Wolfpack we didn’t know we needed – they are hilarious together; there’s a cutaway reaction from Luda during a Blue Man Group bit that I keep replaying because it gets more stupid and silly each time. Wesley Snipes it out here having a TIME and, like, who wrote this thing because it’s SO good, so f-cking good!
Also… the final song at the end… it’s Jungkook’s “Standing Next To You”, the Usher Remix, which is the final track on Coming Home. And, as you probably now by now, a goddamn banger. So now there’s *some* speculation over whether or not JK will be joining Usher during his halftime show even though he’s serving military duty in South Korea right now. I think it’s a stretch that he’d be given a leave to be able to do this and I’m not sure how that would look to the public, and Korean stars have to be quite careful with public perception but, I mean, this is one of the biggest stages on one of the biggest nights so, for national cultural promotional purposes, you can certainly rationalise the exemption.
Not that Usher needs JK because there’s a long, long, LOOOOONG list of special guests he’s been associated with over his career for him to choose from. Luda and Lil Jon are obvious, Alicia Keys, Justin Bieber, any artist featured on the new album, and people will lose their sh-t over all of them but for me, I think my soul would leave my body if, like, Chilli showed up for a dance break. She was in the videos for “You Remind Me” and “U Got it Bad” and, yes, it took them both a while to get over each other, especially for her, but she said last year that she’s finally moved past it now and she and Matthew Lawrence (!) seem solid so… let me hope, if it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen and it’s no big but if it does happen, MY GOD, Vegas might implode. I will probably implode. Usher, Sunday night, it’s the main event!
We're talking about this on The Squawk! (app link here)
