Usher is about to have his moment of shine, but not without some of his friends. The R&B singer revealed in a recent sit down with Entertainment Tonight that he would have been a “fool” had he not had Lil Jon and Ludacris join him on stage to perform their hit “Yeah.”
“I would be a fool to not play ‘Yeah!’ let’s just start there,” Usher said. “It would be foolish to make it all the way to Las Vegas, Jon is here, Luda’s here and not play ‘Yeah!,” the 45-year-old icon told the outlet Thursday.
Usher discussed squeezing his 30-year career into a 13-minute show, which was reportedly pushed to 15 minutes after negotiating with Super Bowl officials.
“I was very mindful of my past, celebrating my present —which is here in Las Vegas- and thinking about where we’re headed in the future,” he said. “That was really the idea.”
The “U Got It Bad” singer recently ended his Las Vegas residency but says some of the special moments from those shows— “like skating”–will be added in the halftime show so that people “get a chance to see some of what I did here.”
“But you’re going to get the best of it because it’s before 60,000 people in this room — and hopefully 180,000 people, 80 million people for the world to see,” he continued.
This isn’t Usher’s first time appearing on the big stage at the Super Bowl. In 2011, he joined the Black Eyed Peas on stage.
“My hand got caught in the wire that was holding me like 30 feet in the air,” he said. “And I almost missed my first mark. I was like, ‘Oh my God, don’t let this malfunction caused me to miss something.’”
Nonetheless, he said it was “amazing” to perform in front of a large crowd, adding that it ignited his passion for having his own Superbowl Halftime Show, PEOPLE reported.
“But it was really fueled by being able to be just in that moment with the Black Eyed Peas,” Usher said.
The Kansas City Chiefs will play the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday in Super Bowl LVIII, which kicks off on Feb. 11 at 6:30 p.m. ET.
