Usher and Chris Brown Are Going On Tour Together

Last week brought the announcement that R&B singers Usher and Chris Brown will begin touring nationwide together this year, with this collaboration being titled "The Raymond & Brown Tour," also known as "The R&B Tour." This past Tuesday, the actual tour dates were revealed, as well as which cities the two of them will be performing in.

From Variety:

The 33-date stadium tour kicks off on June 26 at Denver's Empower Field at Mile High, followed by dates in Detroit, Nashville and Washington, D.C. They have two dates at East Rutherford, NJ's MetLife Stadium as well as Las Vegas' Allegiant Stadium and Los Angeles' SoFi Stadium, plus another pair at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The tour concludes at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium on December 11.The tour comes on the heels of Usher's "Past, Present, Future" tour, which ran through 2024 and picked back up in 2025. Brown, meanwhile, wrapped his "Breezy Bowl XX" world tour in October, becoming his highest-grossing tour to date with nearly $300 million earned.

Citi presale begins on April 21, followed by the "R&B" tour presale on April 23. General onsale begins on April 27 at 12 p.m. local time.

It should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that this tour announcement sparked plenty of conversation on social media among R&B fans. There are those who are absolutely ecstatic about this and can't wait to snatch up tickets as soon as they go on sale. There are those who made it clear that under no circumstances would they attend or support this tour. Some are convinced that Chris is doing Usher a favor by going on tour with him, that Usher is leeching off of him, and is using Chris to increase ticket sales so that more people will come out to see him perform live. Others are wondering why Usher would subject himself to being on stage with Chris Brown. At least one fan joked that you will end up going home with either herpes or a black eye after seeing them in concert. (Their words, not mine.) And there are some fans who simply feel that their tour needed a better name than the "Raymond & Brown" tour, which makes them sound like a law firm that works out of the DMV, and should've called the tour "Everybody Hates Chris and Loves Raymond" instead.

Let's go back to what some fans are saying about the tour, in that Usher needs Chris Brown to sell tickets and get people talking about him. This is the same Usher who held two residencies in Las Vegas from 2021 to 2023 at Caesars Palace and the Dolby Live theater at Park MGM, and they both have a combined box office take of nearly $115 million from over 478,000 tickets. (One of those tickets was bought by none other than Keke Palmer, and her attendance at one of those shows went viral on social media when Usher serenaded her in the crowd, which resulted in Keke Palmer's then-boyfriend embarrassing himself by behaving like a f-ckboy on Twitter.) This is the same Usher who performed at the Super Bowl Halftime Show (and who had one person actually using their Twitter fingers to tell us all that he didn't have enough mainstream pop hits to qualify for being there), and put on a fantastic show of millions of viewers worldwide that was worth tuning in for.

As for what Chris Brown has recently accomplished in comparison? Let's break that down, shall we? (CONTENT WARNING: The following paragraph contains mentions of sexual assault against women.)

Breezy holds the record for the most Top 40 hits of any R&B singer in history, and has also had two of his recent albums, Heartbreak on a Full Moon and Indigo both went double and triple platinum, only adding to his commercial success. But it's his activities in his personal life that have gained the most attention from the press and the public. In 2018, both he and rapper Young Lo were named in a sexual assault lawsuit by an unidentified woman for sexual battery, battery and assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress the year before, which she says was committed by Young Lo and another unidentified woman when Brown prevented her from leaving the premises. In 2022, he was sued by another unidentified woman who says that he drugged her and sexually assaulted her in 2020 on a yacht belonging to Sean "Diddy" Combs. In 2023, Brown was sued by a man named Abe Diaw, who said that Brown struck him in the face with a bottle of tequila, and then proceeded to repeatedly stomp on his body. In 2025, Brown was the one filing a $500 million lawsuit, this time against Warner Bros. and the makers of the documentary Chris Brown: A History of Violence, which he says accuses him of being a serial rapist and a sexual abuser, only for that lawsuit to end up being dismissed. And those are only just some of the charges and accusations regarding Chris Brown that I've mentioned here.

Of course, there was one incident that hass made some people wonder why this tour is even happening in the first place: In 2023, Usher and Chris Brown got into a physical altercation with each other at the Skate Rock City rink in Las Vegas, due to Brown being removed from a performance at the American Music Awards where he intended to pay tribute to the late Michael Jackson, and he felt that Teyana Taylor (who was not only present at the rink with both men, but as acting creative director for Usher, she was also involved with the planning of that performance) had something to do with his removal. Words were exchanged, blows were thrown, and headlines were made.

Even after all of that, the best thing that Brown has ever been a part of musically, is the song "Post To Be," with Omarion and Jhené Aiko. And he's not the reason why that song is so memorable and considered a classic. It's because of Jhené, and if you've heard "Post To Be" or know anything at all about it, you already know the reason why.

(To any and all Chris Brown stans who are reading this, and who have every intention of reading me for filth in the comments or on social media because I'm saying all of these things about your fave? Here are two things you should know: 1) "You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better." That is q quote from novelist Anne Lamott, so keep that in mind whenever you read anything about Chris Brown that isn't praising him with every word. 2) Make better choices and get better taste when it comes to the artists you love and defend as if you're their paid attorneys. If you're not willing to do any of that because being a rabid stan and an Internet troll with not a drop of Act-Right anywhere to be found appeals to you so much more, then kindly go f-ck yourselves with chainsaws. That is all.)

Unfortunately for Usher's longtime fans, this decision he has made to tour with Chris Brown isn't the first time he has said or done something to upset and disappoint them. In a recent interview with Forbes, which took place after Combs was convicted last year of charges related to prostitution, Usher made it clear that he had nothing negative to say about him, and that the way he's been represented in the media has not been entirely fair or accurate.

"I don't have anything negative to say about Sean Combs because my experience was not what the world has seen, and how he's been misrepresented...I'm not saying that every man has perfect, I'm not saying all of us don't have flaws," Usher said. "But I can't with any sense of humanity not recognize the valuable contributions this man made for us as black entrepreneurs, for us as businessmen, for us as people who transition culture and ideas into something that's tangible and becomes business. So many people benefited from what he created, and I acknowledge that."

The fact that Usher said this about Diddy made me think of three possibilities: Usher might be an abuser like Diddy (which I truly hope isn't the case), Usher has been abused in the past by Diddy (which I also hope isn't the case), or Usher is fully aware that Diddy still has plenty of shooters on his payroll who can and will go after him for saying anything negative at all about him to the press or the public.

If Usher is doing this tour with Chris Brown because he needs the money that f-cking badly, he could easily just go on ahead and get that money by announcing another residency in Vegas. Fans love a good residency, and I guarantee that it would make his fans (especially the ones who couldn't fly out to see him the last couple of times) very happy. But I also won't pretend as if a monumental backlash against Usher for his choice to collaborate with Brown is going to stop this train from moving, nor will I pretend that there will even be a monumental backlash against him. Sure, there are fans making plenty of noise as they express how unhappy they are with Usher, and that this is all just one more reminder that men will find new and unique ways to disappoint the everloving f-ck out of the women who care about them. There are still millions of people who are willing to spend their hard-earned and hard-stolen money on tickets to see Usher and Chris Brown when they go on sale from the illegal monopoly that is LiveNation/Ticketmaster. Kanye West can still sell out stadiums, despite being a loud, annoying, unrepentant Nazi who will get on the Internet and act like Savannah's mom in Waiting to Exhale as he tells us how much he likes and respects Hitler.

Louis C.K. can lock women in rooms with him, and force them to watch him masturbate without their consent, and without exhibiting a shred of remorse for his actions? He has streaming services like Netflix rolling out the red carpet to give him the comeback he doesn't actually deserve so he can headline their comedy festivals. And when people who are willing to buy tickets are reminded of all of the horrible f-cking things these men have done, they will just shrug their shoulders and continue not giving a sh-t about what their faves are saying or doing, as long as they're being entertained and given something to watch, until the newest version of Harry Potter premieres on HBO and gives more money and more fame to transphobic scat-muncher Joanne K. Rowling, so she can keep reminding us all of how much she hates trans women.

If you'd rather not spend your time or your money to see the law firm of Raymond & Brown in concert, you can always go see some other music legends when Salt-N-Pepa, TLC, and En Vogue in concert all go on tour together later this year, and take comfort in knowing that at least none of these artists have said or done anything controversial or problematic.

(receives phone call from Dustin) Wait, hold up. Chilli did what?! She said that?! Oh. Oh, damn! To shreds, you say?

You know what, never mind! Save your money, stay your asses home, and just go listen to the new album by Raye (or as social media affectionately calls her, Jurnee Winehouse) instead. It is an absolute banger from the first track to the last.