Usher would like to remind fans that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
The eight-time Grammy winner was inadvertently thrust into the center of heated discourse last month when video of him dancing with Keke Palmer at one of his Las Vegas residency shows surfaced on social media.
The clip soon caught the eye of Palmer’s boyfriend, Darius Jackson, who expressed his disapproval of the “Nope” actor’s sheer Givenchy dress on Twitter.
“It’s the outfit tho.. you a mom,” he wrote of Palmer, with whom he welcomed a son, Leodis Andrellton, in February. When fans began calling him out for “mom-shaming,” he doubled down on his stance, noting: “We live in a generation where a man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others & he gets told how much of a hater he is.”
Jackson, a fitness instructor, appeared to deactivate his account on Twitter (now branded as X) shortly afterward.
In an interview with People last week, Usher touched on the controversy, describing it simply as “a pop moment” that was “worth talking about.”
“I think everybody’s vision or a version of what they felt happened there just leads you back to just really having a good time in Las Vegas,” he said. “And that’s what I hope came out of it. Rather, it was a conversation of what was going on with us having fun in front of the audience or conversation about that song.”
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He went on to note: “Every night I’m thinking about how the world now is going to react to this moment that I’ll have with whoever I’m choosing to sing to. But it was a pop moment, and it was fun to have at least conversation going and we just keep it light. I don’t see anything negative happening in Las Vegas.”
More than a month after the controversy, the status of Jackson and Palmer’s relationship remains unclear.
At the time, however, Palmer appeared to have no regrets about her dress and shared a series of photos of herself happily posing in it before the show on Instagram.
In the accompanying caption, she wrote, “I wish I had taken more pictures, but we were running late!”
As for Usher, he’s preparing to visit Paris for a series of eight shows next month before returning to Las Vegas stage later this fall.