Usher was presented with the BET lifetime achievement award on Sunday (Picture: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Usher celebrated in style at the BET Awards on Sunday – but after being given a lifetime achievement award, his acceptance speech was heavily cut.
The legendary R&B singer, 45, who scored four UK number ones between 1998 and 2010, was recognised after decades of success and selling an estimated 100million records worldwide.
After being presented with the award, the Burn singer spoke for 12 minutes, but fans watching at home on TV were unable to hear at least a third of it after the audio cut out.
This year has turned into a lap of honour for Usher, whose real name is Usher Raymond, with the Yeah! hitmaker having already performed at the Super Bowl and celebrated the 20th anniversary of his five times platinum album Confessions.
However, while he was reflecting on a long career, a few swear words weren’t well received by Black Entertainment Television (BET) producers, which caused chaos on the TV feed.
Just before the audio cut out, Usher apologised to the audience after swearing numerous times, admitting: ‘I’m sorry I’m cursing, I just want to tell you all how I really feel.
‘There [were points when] motherf**kers weren’t f**king with me. But I get it, I understand – sometimes you’ve got to go through s**t to get to something.’
In a video posted to TikTok, Usher is then shown pointing to a group of his friends behind him and saying they’re ‘solid’, and that their friendship has nothing to do with ‘motherf**king hit records’.
He then recalled that there were times when there was nobody around to reassure him: ‘[There was] nobody [saying] “You’re alright, this is what you do, you’re gonna like girls, you’re gonna go through s**t”.’
Usher caught up with his bestie Keke Palmer during the awards show (Picture: Getty Images)
Usher was joined by his wife Jennifer Goicoechea, who he married earlier this year (Picture: FilmMagic)
The R&B singer’s voice was heavily censored by TV producers (Picture: John Salangsang/Shutterstock)
Teyana Taylor and Victoria Monét were among the artists who performed a tribute medley for Usher (Picture: Getty Images)
Because of the sheer amount of the speech that was cut, people watching at home speculated that Usher had alluded to recent allegations made against rap mogul P Diddy.
On Twitter, user @Disrxptive commented: ‘It’s very clear he is talking about all of the speculation that’s been going on revolving around his relationship with Diddy.’
However, the uncut footage posted online afterwards showed that Usher at least didn’t reference Diddy – real name Sean Combs – directly, instead choosing to keep things vague.
Twitter user @DJRtistic clarified: ‘Y’all ain’t really miss too much from Usher’s speech, it was just a lotta F-bombs. He definitely didn’t talk about Diddy.’
Usher and Diddy have a long history together, with Diddy helping launch Usher’s career in the 1990s – they later appeared on TV shows together while Usher contributed vocals to some of Diddy’s music.
Diddy himself was given the lifetime achievement just two years ago before the serious allegations against him surfaced in the mainstream media.
Fans at home speculated that Usher was alluding to allegations made against music mogul P Diddy (Picture: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Other key names to win the award are the likes of Busta Rhymes, Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, Samuel L. Jackson, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, and Diana Ross.
Elsewhere in Usher’s speech, he explained why he has dubbed 2024 the year of the father.
‘This name that a man gave me that didn’t stick around because he didn’t love me,’ he said of his own dad.
‘Or at least that was my perception of it because I had to live long enough in order to understand that you have to have a forgiving heart in order to understand the true pitfalls and hardships of a Black man in America and my father, he was a product of that.
‘He made a lot of decisions, made a lot of choices and the one that probably hurt and helped me at the same time was to stay away.’
Usher added: ‘That’s part of the reason why I say this is the year of the father.’
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