Doc Rivers has made sure everyone knows how difficult it has been for him to jump into the head coaching role for the Milwaukee Bucks in the middle of this season. The Bucks are 3-7 with Rivers at the helm, a stark contrast to the 32-14 record they had when he officially took over, and while that record was seemingly a product of some smoke and mirrors, it has been a rocky start to Rivers’ tenure in Milwaukee.
What’s most interesting going forward is how the Bucks respond to Rivers and what he will ask them to do — and how he’ll look to motivate them along the way. Rivers is not a coach who jumps in front of criticism to shield his players and will gladly call out his players when speaking with the media — as we saw when he said some players “were in Cabo” mentally after their dismal loss to the Grizzlies before the All-Star break.
That isn’t something every player responds well to, and we’ll find out if the Bucks have the kind of roster that will. If they don’t, it’s hard to see this resulting in the turnaround Milwaukee is hoping for that gets them into the title conversation. JJ Redick has played for Rivers in the past and has seen this all before, and on First Take on Tuesday morning, he couldn’t help but go off on Rivers in a rant about his lack of accountability.
“I’ve seen the trend for years. The trend is always making excuses. Doc, we get it. Taking over a team in the middle of a season is hard. It’s hard. We get it. Just like getting traded in the middle of the season is hard for a player. We get it. But it’s always an excuse. It’s always throwing your team under the bus. They lose to Memphis, oh it’s his players fault. Memphis was playing G-League guys and two-way guys. Then you look at his quotes over the weekend and now he wants to take credit for the James Harden trade to the Clippers working out. He wants credit for that? There’s never accountability with that guy!”
Stephen A. Smith concurred with Redick, noting that the more Rivers talks the more people are going to start questioning some of the timing of his arrival in Milwaukee, saying, “you got the job, go win,” before rattling off his recent postseason failures.
It’s an especially funny rant considering Redick is now taking over for Rivers in ESPN’s lead NBA booth and will call the NBA Finals in Rivers’ stead. Clearly Redick is not a fan of Doc’s proclivity for seeking credit rather than shouldering blame publicly, and the second half of the season and the postseason will be fascinating in Milwaukee for a variety of reasons.
On the since-deleted Instagram account “colostrum.lover,” a woman (with the world’s worst angle for a selfie) posted a reel with the caption, “I was Sydney Sweeney’s dietican for five years, this is how I helped her get her dream role with five easy food swaps. She wouldn’t stop talking about the last one.”
The word “dietican” being misspelled was the first clue that something was amiss. Clue number two: the user referred to Kraft Mac & Cheese, which Sweeney once called a “childhood staple,” as a “dieticians nightmare” with an “insane amount of additives f*cking with your hormones.”
According to multiple screenshots circulating online, the Euphoria actor commented under the original post and wrote, “i don’t know you and kraft mac n cheese is for life.”
If Sweeney isn’t the official spokesperson for Kraft Mac & Cheese by the end of the week, the head of Kraft’s PR department needs to be dunked into a tub of orange dust.
The Euphoria star’s response went viral, with people celebrating her for calling out a fake. “i need more celebs to start calling out these liars trying to sell diet plans and courses using their names,” one user on X wrote. Another added, “People lie about things that could easily be disproved so boldly these days lol we need to bring back shame.” You can see more reactions below:
i need more celebs to start calling out these liars trying to sell diet plans and courses using their names pic.twitter.com/TykoRhw9Sd
I remember when Anne Hathaway had to call out sites publishing diets and claiming they were how she lost weight to play a woman with consumption in Les Miz. The commodification of celebrity bodies as a means to shill diet culture sadly continues. https://t.co/hJ5LVIgfBk
Grammy Award-winning musician Peso Pluma is gearing up to hit the road hard this summer. Last year, the “Lady Gaga” singer embraced on his first performance run around the world. But if you thought his booking schedule was intense in 2023, wait until you see his 2024 calendar.
Today (February 20), Peso announced his Exodo Tour, which features stops across the US and Canada. Following Chicago’s Sueños Festival, Peso will officially kick off his 37-date run on May 28 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Along with the tour, Peso has already confirmed several festival appearances, including the Governors Ball in New York and Mexico’s Baja Beach Fest. As of today, Peso Pluma has not announced any special guests, but that could be revealed closer to the start of the tour. Continue below for the full tour schedule, tour poster, and ticketing information.
Citi members will have early access to Pes Pluma’s when its presale starts on Wednesday, February 21. The venues, Live Nation, and a few other presales are scheduled for Thursday, February 22. Then, on Friday, February 23, at 10 a.m. local time, the general on-sale will launch. Find more information here.
Peso Pluma’s Exodo Tour dates
05/26 – Chicago, IL @ Sueños Festival
05/28 – Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center
05/30 – Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum
05/31 – Indianapolis, IN @ Gainbridge Fieldhouse
06/01 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
06/03 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
06/04 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
06/07 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
06/09 – New York, NY @ Governor’s Ball**
06/10 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
06/12 – Greensboro, NC @ Greensboro Coliseum
06/21- Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena
06/23- Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center
06/26- New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center
06/28 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
06/30 – Fort Worth, TX @ Dickies Arena
07/17 – San Antonio, TX @ Frost Bank Center
07/19 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center
07/23 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Paycom Arena
07/26 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
07/30- Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
07/31 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
08/03 – Tulsa, OK @ BOK Center
08/05 – Kansas City, MO @ T-Mobile Center
08/06 – Omaha, NE @ CHI Health Center
08/09 – Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
08/10 – Rosarito, MX @ Baja Beach Fest
08/11 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Delta Center
08/13 – Portland, OR @ Moda Center
08/16 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
08/27 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
08/28 – San Jose, CA @ SAP Center
09/03 – Palm Desert, CA @ Acrisure Arena
09/07 – Fresno, CA @ Save Mart Center at Fresno State
09/17 – San Diego, CA @ Pechanga Arena
09/12 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
09/23 – Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center
10/06 – Chicago, IL @ United Center
10/09 – Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse
10/11 – Montville, CT @ Mohegan Sun Arena
Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.
While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.
Laura Jane Grace – Hole In My Head
Each Laura Jane Grace song is its own contained world. But the Against Me! frontwoman and punk dignitary bridges her stories together through universal themes of redemption, political unrest, abuse, and fascism. That’s the vision she attains on her second solo album, Hole In My Head. On songs like the Springsteenian, jaunty “Keeping The Faith” and the penultimate acoustic number “Hard Feelings,” Grace acknowledges the pain she has endured and finds a way through. Hole In My Head is another showcase for Grace’s gift as a talented songwriter, one in which she looks both inward and outward.
Grandaddy – Blue Wav
On social media and in recent interviews, Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle has quipped about how nearly every song on Blu Wav, the first album from Grandaddy since 2017, is slow and boring. It’s a slow-paced record, sure, but it is never boring. Named after Lytle’s amalgamation of bluegrass and new wave, Blu Wav is a contemplative record. It’s about taking your time. It’s about retreating to a quiet place, how your imagination can transport you somewhere comforting, distressing, or even both at once. From the gorgeous pedal steel on “East Yosemite” to the instrumental, piano-based denouement “Blu Wav Buh Bye,” Lytle’s latest work is a marvel. It’s easy to say that he’s still got it.
Snarls – “Heavy Drinker”
On the cusp of their second full-length album, With Love, Snarls are poised for a breakout moment. If lead single “Heavy Drinker” is anything to go by, then the Columbus trio are about to release one of the best indie-pop records of 2024. With production assistance from former Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla, Snarls takes on a new sheen of polish on “Heavy Drinker,” sparkling to life with bright guitars, hooky ebullience, and buoyant vocals.
Waxahatchee – “Bored”
Katie Crutchfield is one of the greatest contemporary songwriters we have. “Bored,” her new single as Waxahatchee, buttresses that title. Featuring Crutchfield’s conversational delivery and country-fried electric guitars, the latest preview of her sixth album, Tigers Blood, is another excellent addition to the indie-folk musician’s catalog. Yet its title is something of a misnomer; it’s hard to imagine being bored in the slightest when there’s a song this fantastic blasting out of your speakers.
DIIV – “Brown Paper Bag”
The famous metaphor about a frog in boiling water holds a lot of weight today. By placing a frog in a pot of room-temperature water and slowly turning up the heat, it will die. Given the current political landscape, one in which genocidal murders, U.S. gun violence, and capitalist exploitation occur on a daily basis, it feels like we’re all frogs in boiling water, further dissociating with every waking hour. DIIV’s upcoming record, Frog In Boiling Water, out May 24 and named after this analogy, speaks to that collective dread. “Brown Paper Bag,” its lead single, is a powerful thesis statement. “My mind’s at ease / When I’m in pain,” sings frontman Zachary Cole Smith, his voice scarcely above a murmur as noisy guitars envelop him. The Brooklyn-based shoegaze band may not offer a balm, per se, but acknowledgment is always better than willful ignorance.
Jessica Pratt – “Life Is”
The first instrument you hear on Jessica Pratt’s new single may come as a shock: drums. The Los Angeles-based indie-folk songwriter has largely shied away from percussion altogether, opting for nothing more save for her acoustic guitar, an occasional piano melody, and her entrancing voice. “Life Is,” the first taste she has given us of her fourth record, Here In The Pitch, takes her to what was once unmapped territory, but Pratt sounds right at home. Backed by the ‘60s-esque drums and acoustic guitar strums, she pontificates on the paradox of time: how it is simultaneously infinite and finite. “Time is time and time and time again,” she sings in the chorus. It’s a heady concept, but Pratt’s soothing voice provides the solace you didn’t realize you needed.
Hana Vu – “Care”
“Care,” the lead single from Hana Vu’s second album, Romanticism, documents the isolating experience of introspection, how our thoughts and emotions can feel like an internal burden that no one else can truly understand. “The more I think about it now / I’m just a book you throw away / ‘Cause you don’t know what I’m about,” the Los Angeles-bred songwriter sings in her lower register. Working again with Day Wave’s Jackson Phillips, Hana Vu’s latest song is another indie-pop gem, the shimmering production complementing her self-reflective musings.
Bess Atwell – “Release Myself”
Long Pond, New York, has become a hotbed for songwriters recently; everyone from indie darling Sharon Van Etten to pop-culture juggernaut Taylor Swift has secluded themselves there to record music. Add Brighton musician Bess Atwell to that list. She recently paid a visit to Aaron Dessner’s remote studio to make her latest album, Light Sleeper. Alongside the announcement comes lead single “Release Myself,” a ruminative indie-folk tune akin to the softer sides of bands like Big Thief or Dessner’s own band, The National. On “Release Myself,” Atwell chronicles her experiences with panic disorder: “I don’t wanna be scared anymore / I’m tired of being tied up,” she sings in the first verse. When the chorus arrives, she makes her triumphant declaration: “I can only release myself.”
Babehoven – “Birdseye”
Mixing indie-folk, slowcore, and shoegaze, Babehoven craft a sonic environment that is entirely their own. The New York-based duo of Maya Bon and Ryan Albert accomplish a similar feat on “Birdseye,” a hypnotizing single from their new record, Water’s Here In You, which releases this April. The song itself explores reconciliation with an estranged loved one after that person was diagnosed with a near-fatal illness. In its gentle instrumentation, featuring melodic acoustic guitars and tender percussion, “Birdseye” examines love from a distance and how reunion can heal old wounds.
Idles – Tangk
The Bristol post-punk band Idles used to operate in one mode: loud, abrasive, and often furious. Their sheer volume was their main signifier, but now they’ve partially softened up, adding more subtlety to their anthemic tunes. On Tangk, their fifth record, the intensity remains, but rather than going in a purely punk direction, they make their noisy guitars and unrelenting drums a bit more rhythmic. They’re embracing early-aughts dance-punk so much that LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Nancy Whang themselves make a cameo on (wait for it) “Dancer.” There’s also opening track “Idea 01,” which sees frontman Joe Talbot crooning like he’s Thom Yorke (Nigel Godrich did work on it, after all), and late-album cut “Jungle” mostly goes by at a steady pace, the toms locking into an insistent groove that lets up steam toward the end.
“Europe, you ready?” he shared in a statement. “After the epic experience at the Super Bowl and the huge demand for shows across North America, I’m happy to announce I’m coming your way as well – for shows in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin. This tour is both a celebration of the past 30 years and a glimpse into the future. We are just getting started!”
According to a press release, fans can expect Usher to perform a mix of his classic hits, and selections from his new album, Coming Home. This will be also his first time touring there since 2015, outside of the Paris residency he did last year.
Tickets for Usher’s Europe tour will go on sale this Thursday, February 22 at noon local time. Additional information can be found on his website.
Continue scrolling for a complete list of Usher’s upcoming dates in Europe.
Usher 2024 European Tour Dates: Usher: Past Present Future Tour
04/01 -– London, UK @ The O2 Arena
04/02 — London, UK @ The O2 Arena
04/05 — London, UK @ The O2 Arena
04/15 — Paris, France @ Accor Arena
04/22 — Amsterdam, The Netherlands @ Ziggo Dome
05/01 — Berlin, Germany @ Uber Arena
INDIANAPOLIS — It’s hard to imagine that Chet Holmgren‘s rookie year in the NBA could be going any better. While an injury kept him from suiting up during the 2022-23 campaign, Holmgren has been a revelation for the upstart Oklahoma City Thunder. The team entered the All-Star break with a 37-17 record, good for the second-best mark in the Western Conference. If you said you saw that coming at the beginning of the season, absolutely no one would believe you.
Holmgren, meanwhile, is a near lock to earn an All-Rookie First Team selection, he has a real case to be named the league’s Rookie of the Year (he’d be the first player to win it since the Thunder moved to OKC), and he’s fit like a glove as the starting center for an exciting young team spearheaded by an MVP candidate. And yet, in the face of all of this, there is one overarching thing that Holmgren believes.
“We have to continue focusing on getting better, understanding that the job’s not finished,” Holmgren told Dime at the Panini Prizm Lounge during All-Star weekend. “We have nothing to be happy about yet. We haven’t accomplished anything in the grand scheme of things. You look around the league, there’s people that have done a lot more than we’ve done. So, we understand that. We know that 54 games doesn’t mean anything. What really means something is what you do after those 54 games and all the way to the end of the season.
“So, we’re focusing on getting better every single day,” he continues. “And hopefully, that puts us in a good spot.”
There’s a near-impossible balance for teams like the Thunder to strike. Not every team can resist the urge to feel excited about anything and everything when they’re exceeding expectations and suddenly hear themselves mentioned as a championship contender. The sobering reality that perspective brings isn’t always welcomed, and yet the 21-year-old Holmgren has plenty of it — for example, when I misspoke and already said Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is an MVP, he quickly asked if I’ve “seen the script already” before pointing out that I was “speaking as if it was a done deal already.” (For the record: He had the kind of smirk that comes when an athlete knows they can mess with the person shoving a recorder in their face, even if he was being serious about not putting the cart before the horse.)
As Holmgren tells it, the Thunder take an egalitarian approach to making sure everyone keeps that perspective, which falls in line with how they approach most things.
“No one person’s most responsible for anything on our team,” Holmgren says. “We have a great group of guys and a great group of leadership on our team. Everybody holds everybody accountable, and everybody starts with themselves, too — making sure that we’re all prioritizing the right things, from winning, getting better, working hard, making smart decisions on and off the court, whatever it might be. We don’t wanna do anything that’s gonna take away from the goal that we’re gonna reach.”
During our conversation, Holmgren autographed cards for Panini as part of his partnership with the brand — “Hopefully they get to the right and most deserving fans,” he says, while noting seeing his cards is, “pretty cool.” It was all part of a busy weekend for the former Gonzaga standout, who also competed alongside Thunder teammate Jalen Williams in the Rising Stars Game as part of the team led by Jalen Rose which won the whole competition.
All of this is coming on the heels of the NBA’s version of a redshirt year. After getting taken with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, Holmgren suffered a foot injury during an appearance at Jamal Crawford’s CrawsOver Pro-Am league that sidelined him for the entirety of the season. Like Ben Simmons in 2017-18 and Blake Griffin in 2010-11, Holmgren is the rare rookie who got a year in the league to prepare himself for when he stepped onto the floor — which let him get healthy and refine his craft as a basketball player.
“I worked extremely hard last year, day in and day out,” Holmgren says. “I didn’t waver from the plan or the vision, I stuck true to it. And at the end of the day, the process is always gonna win. If you cheat it, it’s gonna bite you on the rear. So, I tried my best not to cheat it at all and I felt like I did a really good job of that, and it’s helped me this year.”
So far, the results speak for themselves. He’s averaging 16.7 points, 7.6 rebounds, 2.7 assists, and 2.6 blocks in 30.1 minutes per game while shooting 39.3 percent from behind the three-point line. The list of rookies that can say they’ve averaged 16 points, seven rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 2.5 blocks a game is Holmgren, Tim Duncan, and Victor Wembanyama. The list of players who can say they’ve hit those benchmarks while shooting 39 percent from three is Holmgren and Hakeem Olajuwon in 1993-94, when he was named NBA MVP and led the Houston Rockets to a championship.
If Holmgren’s going to end up being an MVP candidate, that’ll come a little farther down the road. Right now, Gilgeous-Alexander is the Oklahoma City player in the hunt for that individual honor — in the latest version of ESPN’s MVP straw poll, Gilgeous-Alexander is comfortably in second behind only Nikola Jokic.
Basketball is a game of five players working in unison to make one another better, and that’s particularly true when it comes to the relationship between a point guard and a center. Holmgren has played with some exceptional guards in his basketball career — in high school, he played alongside Orlando’s Jalen Suggs, and at Gonzaga, he was teammates with Indiana’s Andrew Nembhard. He knows what great guard play looks like, and is quick to note “it’s always easy to play with great players who have the want and the will to do what they do.”
Even with that acknowledgement, Holmgren understands that there’s a uniqueness to Gilgeous-Alexander’s game.
“He has such a different play style,” Holmgren says. “He’s really Kobe-esque in the way he plays, it’s a lot of self-creation, tough shot making, a lot in the midrange, which, you don’t really see that archetype anymore. On top of that, he plays at a really high level on the defensive end. It’s just a combination of things that you don’t really find in many players, and I think that’s what makes him so tough to guard and makes him such a good player.”
It’s difficult to not be optimistic about what the future holds for the Thunder in just about every respect. At the same time, there’s no guarantee that success is an inevitability, something that Oklahoma City understands better than any other franchise. The last time they had a young team filled with homegrown stars in Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Russell Westbrook, that trio made the NBA Finals once and lost, then Harden got traded, Durant eventually left in free agency, and despite his best efforts, Westbrook couldn’t bring them back to those heights before he was likewise traded.
Perhaps things will be different for this group of young Thunder stars. It’s hard not to get excited and think about what could happen in the future. Maybe Gilgeous-Alexander will win an MVP or two, Holmgren will bring home the Rookie of the Year award, and those two will be joined by other teammates like Jalen Williams on All-NBA teams for the next 15 years. Maybe the NBA Finals will return to Oklahoma City. Maybe this group will be the one to finally raise a banner in Paycom Center. Maybe we’re witnessing the early days of a dynasty that will come to define the next decade-plus of professional basketball.
That’s all impossible to know right now, though. All anyone can do is take things day-by-day and watch one of basketball’s most exciting young teams continue to grow alongside one another. It’s what Chet Holmgren would prefer we do.
The month of January is always huge for football, but Peacock scored an impressive win thanks to the AFC Wild Card game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins.
The showdown marked the first time that an NFL playoff game was exclusive to a streamer, and it paid off huge for Peacock as it became the “biggest day on streaming platforms that Nielsen has ever measured.”
The Jan. 13 game, which averaged close to 23 million viewers, accounted for 3.9 billion minutes of watch time (including over-the-air broadcasts in the teams’ local markets) — almost 10 percent of all streaming viewing that day.
The NFL game also drove Peacock to its largest share of viewing for a month in the Gauge rankings. The NBCUniversal streamer had 1.6 percent of all TV use for the month. YouTube (8.6 percent) and Netflix (7.9 percent) remained the top individual streaming platforms.
As for the obvious question: Was Taylor Swift at the wild card game cheering on her boyfriend Travis Kelce? You bet. The pop star attended the freezing cold game where she debuted her custom-made jacket bearing Kelce’s number.
Much to the consternation of right-wingers who were convinced that the CIA was engineering the Chiefs’ Super Bowl run, Swift has been a constant presence at Kelce’s game and an absolute ratings boon to the NFL as her legion of fans started tuning into games to catch a glimpse of the singer.
Did Swift’s presence help Peacock put up record-breaking numbers for the AFC Wild Card game? We can’t say for certain, but we wouldn’t be surprised if a Swiftie boost was in the mix.
Texas trio Khruangbin continues the rollout for their new album A LA SALA with a psychedelic animated video for the project’s second single, “May Ninth.” The video evokes impressionist pencil sketches, environmentalism, and the works of Studio Ghibli to tell a funky short story about the circle of life and the interconnectedness of all things.
The band is also due to hit the road for their A LA SALA Tour, beginning with a pair of performances at Coachella and continuing through early October. You can see the tour dates below.
Watch Khruangbin’s “May Ninth” video above.
A LA SALA is out 4/5 on Dead Oceans. Get more info here.
Khruangbin 2024 Tour Dates
04/14 — Coachella @ Indio, CA
04/18 — Alex Madonna Expo Center @ San Luis Obispo, CA*
04/21 — Coachella @ Indio, CA
04/23 — Brooklyn Bowl @ Las Vegas, NV*
04/24 — Brooklyn Bowl @ Las Vegas, NV*
04/26 — Revel @ Albuquerque, NM*
04/27 — Revel @ Albuquerque, NM*
05/22 — The Met @ Philadelphia, PA^
05/23 — The Met @ Philadelphia, PA^
05/25 — Boston Calling @ Boston, MA
05/26 — Saratoga Performing Arts Center @ Saratoga Springs, NY^
05/28 — Rockin’ At The Knox @ Buffalo, NY^
05/29 — Jacob’s Pavilion @ Cleveland, OH^
05/31 — History @ Toronto, ON^
06/01 — History @ Toronto, ON^
06/02 — History @ Toronto, ON^
06/04 — The Masonic Temple Theatre @ Detroit, MI^
06/07 — The Salt Shed @ Chicago, IL
06/08 — The Salt Shed @ Chicago, IL^
06/09 — The Salt Shed @ Chicago, IL^
06/11 — Red Hat Amphitheater @ Raleigh, NC
06/14 — Bonnaroo @ Manchester, TN
08/15 — Greek Theatre @ Berkeley, CA%
08/16 — Greek Theatre @ Berkeley, CA%
08/18 — Edgefield @ Troutdale, OR%
08/19 — Edgefield @ Troutdale, OR%
08/21 — Kettlehouse @ Bonner, MT%
08/22 — Kettlehouse @ Bonner, MT%
08/24 — Granary Live @ Salt Lake City, UT%
08/27 — Red Rocks @ Morrison, CO&
08/28 — Red Rocks @ Morrison, CO%
09/20 — Forest Hills Tennis Stadium @ New York, New York+
09/21 — Forest Hills Tennis Stadium @ New York, New York+
09/23 — The Anthem @ Washington, DC$
10/02 — The Factory @ St. Louis, MO$
10/03 — The Factory @ St. Louis, MO$
10/09 — Saenger Theatre @ New Orleans, LA$
10/10 — Saenger Theatre @ New Orleans, LA$
* with Hermano Gutiérrez
^ with John Carroll Kirby
% with Peter Cat Recording Co.
+ with Men I Trust
$ with Arooj Aftab
In a new short film that dropped via the music platform, it provides a look at Usher’s rehearsals and the changes that were made to the setlist and production. Oh, and it was directed by Jay-Z and Hamish Hamilton, as they shot the footage entirely on an iPhone.
“As I put together the songs, like a puzzle piece to represent this type of soulful music, R&B and mixture of this pop that is my own, I think God really blessed me with the right people to help build the artist that I am,” Usher shared in the ten-minute film. “I’m happy that I’m able to share this moment with them.”
“If you put in the work, people will respect what you do,” he added.
Throughout the video, he runs through the routine repeatedly with his backup dancers. Usher also takes some time to do vocal warmups, as he rehearses to pronounce the consonants a little stronger. It is also split with high-quality footage taken up close during the actual show.
Check out Usher’s behind-the-scenes film of his Super Bowl Halftime Show above.
Above all else, Usher Raymond IV is a showman. The “Ruin” singer’s memorizing capabilities have been on full display in the last few years alone. Just look at the clips circulating from his record-setting My Way Residency in Las Vegas. But sometimes he’s so caught in the theatrics, he could overstep a few boundaries. Although Usher doesn’t find anything wrong with his passionate embrace of Alicia Keys during the Superbowl LVIII Halftime Show, he has voiced some regret over another performance.
On February 19, while chatting with Power 105.1 FM’s The Breakfast Club, Usher admitted that he crossed the line when he slapped Nicki Minaj’s butt back at the VMAs over a decade ago. As the pair performed their 2014 song “She Came To Give It To You,” off Usher’s album Hard II Love, he went overboard as he attempted to make Minaj’s derrière a focal point of the set.
“That was Jamaican culture,” he said. “So you gotta go to Jamaica. That was just a moment that was fun. By the way, it was me playing my bass, so I probably would’ve bumped my shoulder or my hand, but I had my bass in my hand, and I was playing, so I kind of bopped off her body a little bit. If you go back and look at the video, you’ll understand because I did it there for the first time. That was a little bit of Jamaican culture.”
Initially, Usher didn’t appear to be apologetic, but he eventually noticed the flaws in his actions. “I think I was reaching a bit when I smacked her, though,” he said. “I shouldn’t have smacked her butt. I shouldn’t have did that.”
On stage, Minaj visibly showed that she did not appreciate being inappropriately touched in that manner. Instead of making a scene during the performance, she took it to the booth taking a few jabs at him on her 2020 song, “Trollz” with 6ix9ine.
Watch the full interview above.
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