In a new interview on The Breakfast Club, Usher downplayed the reaction to him hugging Alicia Keys from behind during the Super Bowl Halftime Show performance but admitted he probably went a bit too far when he slapped Nicki Minaj's butt during the 2014 VMAs.
Near the start of the interview, as seen above, Charlamagne described Usher as "a domestic terrorist" and grilled him on the moment with Keys, which prompted reactions across social media. "Stop. No, listen," he said with a smile, denouncing the joke "domestic terrorist" tag that Charlamagne gave him. "Nah, man, it was a celebration," he said. "We had an amazing time at the Super Bowl, the most-watched Super Bowl of all time. More people watched that than the Apollo 11 landing, man."
Later in the interview, Charlamagne used the attention regarding the Alicia Keys hug to highlight another steamy onstage moment with a performer. "Usher, have you seen some of your old moments, like when you was onstage with Nicki Minaj and you was headbutting her ass... Why was you so unhinged in that moment?" said Charlamagne.
"By the way, that was Jamaican culture, you gotta go to Jamaica, you know what I'm saying?" he replied with a laugh around the 18-minute point. "That was just a moment that was fun, and by the way it was me playing my bass so I would have bumped my shoulder or my hand... But I had my bass in my hand so I was playing, so I just kind of bopped off her body a little bit. If you back and look at the video, you'll understand because I did it there the first time. That was a little bit of Jamaican culture. ... I think I was reaching a bit when I smacked her, though, I shouldn't have smacked her butt."
The topic then circled back around to all the chatter on the hug with Keys. "In no way, anything that was done there should have been viewed as bad or in any way perverted or anything like that," he added. "No, it was literally about having fun because of a song that me and Alicia made many years ago and we celebrate it, because of the legacy of it. And no disrespect to anybody or anything like that."
Charlamagne asked him if he's "shared a laugh" about the reactions over it with Keys and her husband, Swizz Beatz. "Absolutely we laughed about it," he said. "But it's all love." For what it's worth, Swizz Beatz has completely downplayed the wild reactions to the moment too, and the couple recently shared a cute photo of their Valentine's Day celebrations.
Usher, meanwhile, recently married his wife, Epic Records senior vice president, Jennifer Goicoechea, following his headlining performance at the Super Bowl LVIII.
