Usher doesn’t want any “smoke” from singing his hit single “Boyfriend.” The 44-year-old music artist immediately stopped serenading Gabrielle Union upon noticing her husband, Dwyane Wade, right next to her in the audience.
As the “OMG” singer approached the Bring It On actress, 50, in the crowd during the Tuesday, September 26 performance in Paris, he started by singing the track’s opening lyric, “Somebody said that your boyfriend’s lookin’ for me.”
“OK, let’s stop. Let’s not get carried away,” Usher abruptly said. “This is Dwyane Wade, I ain’t crazy. That man will knock my whole head off and then dunk it.” The “Yeah!” singer then went up to the NBA player, 41, to extend his hand and say, “What’s up, king?”
Later that evening, Usher and Dwyane shared a clip of the hilarious interaction to their respective Instagram accounts. The Grammy Award winner captioned the post, “Look, I don’t want no smoke. Night one in Paris …”
This isn’t the first viral moment when Usher has serenaded a lady at one of his concerts. Perhaps the most infamous one took place over the summer with actress Keke Palmer. During his Las Vegas residency in July, the “My Way” singer brought the Nope star, 30, on stage to join him while he sang and danced with her. The moment led to a controversial dispute between her and her boyfriend, Darius Daulton Jackson, who called Keke out for her wardrobe choice that night.
“It’s the outfit tho … you a mom [sic],” Darius tweeted on July 6. After he received excessive backlash from social media users for his comments, he followed up with a separate tweet, doubling down on his stance.
“We live in a generation where a man of the family doesn’t want the wife [and] mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others, [and] he gets told how much of a hater he is,” Darius wrote “This is my family [and] my representation. I have standards [and] morals to what I believe. I rest my case.”
The following month, Keke appeared in Usher’s music video for his song “Boyfriend.” Nevertheless, despite breakup rumors, it appears that Keke and Darius have put his remarks behind them. The couple are raising their son, Leodonis “Leo,” whom they welcomed in February.