Usher has revealed that he was supposed to be in a supergroup with Jay-Z, Pharrell Williams and Diddy that never came to fruition.
This week, Usher appeared on the popular Club Shay Shay podcast, hosted by former American Footballer Shannon Sharpe. Sharpe asked the ‘Yeah!’ singer if he ever turned down a collaboration that he later regretted.
“You gon’ hate me for this one,” Usher replied. “Jay-Z, Pharrell, Diddy, and me was supposed to be a group. Yeah, that’s crazy. I didn’t say, ‘No.’ I didn’t say, ‘Yeah.’ I think that we just got caught up. We all got caught up in the moment. We was talking about it and having secret meetings about it.”
He added: “We was talking about music and how we was gon’ flip it, and the business of it. Somehow, we just got distracted, and it never happened. That’s one that I actually wish would have happened.”
Usher has worked with Diddy, Jay-Z and Williams, separately. However, the four artists have never made a song together.
In 2002, he was featured on Diddy’s Top 3 Billboard single ‘I Need A Girl, Pt. 1’. Usher also joined the Bad Boy Records founder on ‘Better On The Other Side’ – a tribute to the late Michael Jackson.
Years later, the Atlanta singer worked with both Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé on his fourth studio album ‘Here I Stand’. HOV has a verse on ‘Best Thing’ and the latter was on the remix of ‘Love In This Club’.
On Usher’s 2012 ‘Lookin 4 Myself’ album, Pharrell hopped on the album cut ‘Twisted’.
Pharrell and Jay-Z have both been in supergroups. The Neptunes producer teamed with Lupe Fiasco and Kanye West to form Child Rebel Soldier in the ’00s. The Roc Nation mogul was once in Murder Inc., a New York-based collective with Ja Rule and DMX.
Last year, Usher was announced as the headlining act at this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Since 2019, Jay-Z has been a music strategist for the NFL and one of his jobs includes producing the coveted performance.
- READ MORE: Ranking the 10 best Super Bowl halftime shows in history
The highly-anticipated show will take at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday, February 11. Earlier this month, it was teased that Usher is planning “big surprises” for his performance, which will include skating, “killer choreography”, “major costume change” and “some important guests”.
Usher recently shared a teaser video for his Super Bowl Halftime Show, with the clip stating that the performance has been “30 years in the making”. It came after the singer said late last year that he began his preparation for the legendary gig three decades ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcRLTbQxgcI
The show will happen two days after the Grammy winner releases his ninth studio album, ‘Coming Home’. This week (January 31), the singer unveiled the LP’s tracklist, including features from Latto, The-Dream, Burna Boy and more.
In other news, T-Pain played an unreleased collaboration he, Usher and Michael Jackson did in the early ’00s that was shelved. He said Jackson never finished the song after the reference song was leaked.