Lionel Richie Takes Shots At Usher & Chris Brown Tour Onstage In Phoenix

Usher and Chris Brown are currently co-headlining a massive stadium tour, which has yielded lots of bizarre controversies, surprisingly all involving Usher and not Brown. Usher went viral for inviting a woman onstage in Nashville for some faux-flirtatious grinding and then dismissing her when she clearly wasn't into the bit. He went viral again for allegedly sending a body double onstage in New Jersey, and for beckoning a hotel doorman to hold the door for him. Somehow Chris Brown, a longtime controversy magnet, has managed to stay out of the news during all this.

Usher and Brown's forebear in pop-R&B superstardom, Lionel Richie, is on his own headlining arena tour right now. Tuesday night in Phoenix at Mortgage Matchup Center, Richie took some time to weigh in on the Usher/Chris Brown extravaganza. Here's what he said, as seen in fan-made video from the crowd:

Usher and Chris Brown, see, they trying to do something new! Commodores and Earth, Wind & Fire, we were doing that back 40 years ago. Only difference is, between then and now, we didn't go to jail! We're fine Christian men, fine Christian men. Fine Christian men, that's right. See, we didn't have that Instagram and that TikTok and that go out and tell a lie and they go and post it.

It's weird to think about Usher and Chris Brown, veteran stars who haven't been the hot new thing in decades, getting slagged off for failing to "do something new." Nobody attending the R&B Tour, as their joint venture has been branded, is expecting to see "something new." But if Brown, 37, and Usher, 47, are uncs by most people's calculations, they're still young compared to Richie, 77, who was happy to get off some Back In My Day-style rhetoric at the next generation's expense. He might want to revise his math, though; 40 years ago, Richie had been out of the Commodores for years and was well into his solo career.

You can watch Richie deliver this oration below.