View this video on YouTube
Usher says he had “secret meetings” with Jay-Z, Pharrell, and Diddy about supergroup plans that sadly never panned out.
The reveal of this would-be supergroup is tucked into the singer’s new interview with Shannon Sharpe, notably released mere days before the Apple Music Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show. Around 51 minutes into the Club Shay Shay discussion, Usher was asked to speak about any collaborations he could have been a part of that ultimately failed to come to fruition.
“You gon’ hate me for this one,” Usher said. “Jay-Z, Pharrell, Diddy, and me was supposed to be a group. Yeah. That’s crazy. You gon’ hate me for that, I know.”
After Sharpe expressed shock at this news, Usher elaborated a bit further on why, in his opinion, these plans didn’t work out.
“We just got caught up, I think,” Usher explained. “We all got caught up in the moment. We was talking about it and having secret meetings about it. We were talking about music and how we gon’ flip it and the business of it. And somehow, man, we just got distracted and it never happened. That’s the one that I actually wish would have happened.”
Fans will note that both Usher and Pharrell appeared on Jay’s 2006 track “Anything,” taken from his Kingdom Come album. Usher, meanwhile, has enlisted Pharrell for multiple tracks throughout his career and has also worked with Diddy on several occasions, the Neptunes-produced "I Don't Know" among them.
On Feb. 11, Usher will become the latest artist to join the Super Bowl Halftime Show club, complete with a performance that's been billed as "30 years in the making." But first, the eight-time Grammy winner will release his ninth studio album, Coming Home.
