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- Keke Palmer stars in the music video for Usher’s song “Boyfriend.”
- The music video is out August 16.
- “Boyfriend” pokes fun at Keke’s drama with her partner Darius Jackson.
It’s the Keke Palmer and Usher collab everyone’s been waiting for. Keke, 29, and Usher, 44, both star in the music video for his new song “Boyfriend.” The pair teased the music video on Tuesday, August 15 and confirmed it would be released the following day. The teaser video that they shared on Instagram features Keke with blue highlights in her hair, staring at herself in a mirror, while Usher sings, “Somebody said that your boyfriend’s looking for me.” Usher wrote, “when fantasies become reality”, in his caption when he shared the teaser video.
Keke and Usher joining forces on this new music video comes over a month after they made headlines for their rendezvous in Las Vegas. Keke attended Usher’s residency show on July 5 and he serenaded her on stage, while she was dressed in a black bodysuit under a sheer dress. Keke’s boyfriend, Darius Daulton Jackson, who is the father of the baby boy she welcomed in February, publicly shamed her for her outfit choice. “It’s the outfit tho..you a mom,” he tweeted. The comment faced an immediate backlash, but Darius, 29, doubled down.
“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,” he wrote in a second tweet. “This is my family [and] my representation,” he added in that second tweet, “I have standards [and] morals to what I believe. I rest my case.” However, the public response to Darius’ criticism was too hot to handle, and he deleted the tweets.
Keke spoke about the discourse surrounding her body when chatting with The Cut. “I’ll be honest, I think before I even had the baby, I was really actually quite self-conscious,” she told the publication. “After having my baby, I’ve gotten so much more powerful. We’re going to lean into this new body, and I think that is the whole aura of what’s happening with me in this big boss era as I come into my 30s, and I have my baby boy, and I’m just continuing to spread my wings as a young woman.”
“Do you, new moms. Do you,” Keke added. “Girl, if there’s one person on this earth that loves you for sure, it’s that baby. Be happy because there’s no love like it. Somebody loving you like that, hell, who cares?” Since the clash, Keke and Darius unfollowed each other on Instagram and Twitter, but they haven’t confirmed that they broke up.
Usher also weighed in on the Keke-Darius drama on August 4. “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 told People. “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.” Usher added, “But it was a pop moment, and it was fun to have at least conversation going and we just keep it light.”
