The R&B Tour: I Went to See Usher and Chris Brown Wouldn't Leave Me Alone
The Raymond and Brown Tour poses an impossible question: How do you enjoy the music you love when it's sharing a stage with someone you can't stand?
On behalf of Captain Obviouses everywhere, Chris Brown is a terrible person.
If the endless parade of arrests, assaults, accusations, lawsuits, public meltdowns and his favorite pastime, allegations of abuse, doesn’t make it abundantly clear, then maybe the fact that he just pled guilty to affray on Friday will. But since he won’t be sentenced until October, I suppose that gives him ample opportunity to break someone else’s jaw—or punt a koala.
Because when you’re Christopher Maurice Brown, charges are like Pokémon: You gotta catch ‘em all.
That said, though I came to appreciate Marvin Gaye and Rick James—two of my all-time favs—after their deaths, they weren’t exactly Boy Scouts either. So while I’d be hypocritical to condemn Brown’s fans for looking past his beatdowns to indulge in his bops, I still want absolutely nothing to do with that volatile light-skinned toddler or his music.
But what happens when an artist you can’t stomach shares the stage with someone whose music is the soundtrack of your life?
I was in high school when Usher’s “You Make Me Wanna…” hijacked every prom and Discman on planet Earth, and I still have vivid memories of drowning my hormones in Tanqueray every time “Love In This Club” turned the dance floor into a drunken orgy. Hell, “Burn” had every last one of us ugly crying in the shower, and what better way to hard launch your relationship on MySpace than with “My Boo”?
So when I got bribed with an Infiniti QX65 full of cocktail shrimp to be loud and Black in the Nissan suite at Nissan Stadium for The Raymond and Brown Tour on Saturday night, I had only one response.
“Yeah!”
Complete with Lil Jon ad-libs.
The R&B Tour boasts 40 North American stops of exposed nipples and nostalgia, with K-Ci and Throw Blows taking turns ripping off their shirts in their relentless quest to destroy every thriving marriage known to man. However, with Colored People Time very much a thing, and Usher flying in late due to circumstances beyond his control, the onus fell on DJ Fresh to keep approximately 70,000 scantily clad women entertained for an extra hour and a half. So ungodly Nashville humidity be damned, the Louisville native laid waste to silk press after silk press, reducing meticulously pressed curls to casualties of ‘90s R&B.
Armed with an arsenal that included everything from Karyn White’s “Superwoman” to Keith Sweat’s “Right and a Wrong Way,” he even survived a momentary side-eye when he waded in the waters of R. Kelly. (It’s still a resounding hell no for me.)
At 9 pm, after a belly full of appetizers like Cameo’s “Candy” and SWV’s “Weak,” it was finally time to indulge in our entrée, as Usher and Brown kicked off the show with their multiplatinum collab, “Party.” From there, the co-headliners splintered into separate sets, tagging each other in every handful of songs until reuniting for their fiery finale, “New Flame.”
First up was Usher, who soared through classics like “Caught Up” and “U Don’t Have to Call” before transforming the stadium into a strip club during “Bad Girl”—complete with glistening stripper poles, swirling dollar bills, and a lead guitarist who may or may not be a lingerie model. He deployed a similar motif during “Daddy’s Home,” dragging the 1930s to the present with the grand opening of his own cabaret, Raymond’s. As a gigantic chandelier swayed overhead, showgirls poured him drinks and foxtrotted with their muse while every woman within a two-mile radius ovulated in awe.
It was absolute cinema.
Add in fire-eating performers, smoke machines, pyrotechnics, aerialists twerking upside down to “She Ain’t You,” and thousands of Instagram models dreading their carriages turning back into pumpkins at midnight, and you have all the makings of a Love Island episode.
Again: absolute cinema.
In the midst of all this crooning and crotch thrusting were AI cutscenes that chronicled Usher and Brown’s rise to superstardom, infusing a narrative arc into a show that might otherwise be confused for a brothel.
And of course, Brown’s storyline involved getting into a fistfight.
Because of course, it did.
There were a few brief intermissions (and yes, they disrupted the momentum of the concert) in which Eric Bellinger, Tank, and Mario stepped away from their background vocal duties to remind the audience that they’re accomplished artists who really do this R&B shit too. Their solo sets—and supplementary nipplage—were welcome, but the execution felt clunky and shoehorned into a night that was already two hours behind, especially with DJ Fresh popping in to join them.
If you’re a diehard fan of either Usher or Brown, there’s plenty to love about The R&B Tour. With a 60-song set list that includes nods to Prince’s “Purple Rain” and The Jacksons’ “Can You Feel It,” there’s a 99% chance they’ll perform at least one song that will leave you hoarse in your Zoom meetings the next day. It also helps that Usher and Brown are elite performers who operate at the peak of their superpowers. And I have suspicions about that other person, but Mr. Raymond’s mic was definitely on.
Just try not to go viral if they bring you on stage.