Why Usher Incorporated Roller-Rink Culture Into His Super Bowl Halftime Performance

There is no doubt about it: Usher is a showman through and through.

On Sunday night in Las Vegas, the pop star’s halftime show at Super Bowl LVIII didn’t just give him the chance to showcase his biggest hits for a global audience—it also gave him the opportunity to celebrate a favorite pastime: roller-skating. Halfway through the set, Usher and his dancers strapped on their custom skates to perform jaw-dropping choreography to his hits “Bad Girl” and “OMG.” While Usher wore custom Off-White, the dancers were clad in looks conceived by the singer himself with the help of his friend Liberty Ross—model, businesswoman, and co-founder of the revived Flipper’s Roller Boogie Palace.

“Obviously, there’s never been a performance on wheels before at the halftime show, and I’m really, really excited to see that,” Ross tells Harper’s Bazaar in the days leading up to the NFL championship. “Usher has been a skater his whole life, so this moment feels really natural and organic. It’s a big moment for our community and skate culture as a whole.”

Christopher Polk//Getty Images

Christopher Polk//Getty Images

Ross was born into her own roller-skating legacy. Her father, Ian “Flipper” Ross, founded Flipper’s Roller Boogie Palace in Los Angeles and operated it from 1979 to 1981. The free-spirited roller rink/music venue/nightclub (described as “Studio 54 on wheels”) saw the likes of Cher, Elton John, and Prince come through its doors.

“Literally, this weekend my neighbor came over with Lenny Kravitz, who I’d never met before, and he was like, ‘What?! Your dad is Flip?’” Ross says. “He went to Beverly Hills High, and all the kids would go [to Flipper’s], and that’s how it became the place to be.”

While she was only four years old when Flipper’s closed, roller-skating remained a part of Ross’s world. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, she decided to build an indoor rink in the garage of the Beverly Hills home she shares with her husband, retired record executive Jimmy Iovine, which eventually led to the idea to produce modern-day rinks worldwide. A visit from Usher marked the beginning of what would become a partnership centered on the preservation of roller-skating and its culture, which Ross describes as an “overlooked” global community.

“He actually came over to my house, because my garage is Flipper’s in L.A., and he had heard about it and wanted to come and check it out. That’s when he told me how much he always wanted to try to keep skate culture alive,” Ross says. “When I told him that I was raised in a roller rink and that my parents had this kind of legendary rink here in Hollywood in the late ’70s, he was just so enthralled. We started to become really good friends, who realized that we have the same dream for a community that means so much to both of us.”

Flipper’s Roller Boogie Palace now has a permanent home in London’s White City district, and the brand also operates the first seasonal roller rink at Rockefeller Center in New York City. But the dream didn't stop there for Ross. The 2024 Super Bowl provided the perfect launchpad for the next iteration of Flipper’s: apparel designed and constructed with the roller-rink lover in mind.

Usher’s dancers—in all of their athletic glory—wore pieces showcasing an official capsule collection from Usher and Flipper’s, set to arrive later this year. Fans in Vegas for the big game could also see exclusive designs courtesy of the dancers at Usher’s official Super Bowl after-party, thrown with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

“Skaters are athletes, with many of them doing all kinds of spins and splits and tricks and headstands, and we really wanted to create a line of clothing that has all of that in mind,” Ross explains. “There are jackets, for instance, that have inbuilt skate straps that you can unzip and then hang your skates around your shoulders. We have amazing shrugs with inbuilt padding on the arms and knee pads—like [in] any sport, skaters fall and have to get back up. There’s a real need for apparel for our community.”

Fashioning functional apparel, however, does not mean sacrificing sex appeal. For Ross—and for any project involving the Confessions hitmaker, really—an element of sensuality was a requirement.

Flippers

Sketches of the official Super Bowl after-party looks, courtesy of Flipper’s

"Usher wanted everyone to look as sexy as possible. He wanted to do this kind of ... rather than ‘motocross,’ we’re calling it ‘roller-cross,’” Ross says. “It’s very colorful and very bright for the stage, and we wanted the skaters to really pop. I think that skaters are the sexiest people I’ve ever met, and honestly, I love the way they dress. It’s very much about exaggerating the bodies in the most beautiful ways. With the girls, you’ll see a lot of added padding for support. They’ve got beautiful hips and little waists with gorgeous arm definition. Everything was made for them to look really powerful and strong and beautiful and proud—which is exactly how they should feel.”

Ross hopes Sunday night’s show will serve as as catalyst for what’s to come for Flipper’s, and for the larger rink-culture universe.

“This has been an amazing opportunity to expose the world to these incredibly gifted athletes, dancers, and this beautiful community of people with the most compelling stories who come from all different backgrounds,” she says. “Usher and I are very passionate about building rinks, whether it be pop-ups or parties, and bringing it into as many central spaces as much as possible, so they’re accessible to as many people as possible. We’re just on a mission to spread the gospel.”

Bianca Betancourt is the culture editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, where she covers all things film, TV, music, and more. When she's not writing, she loves impulsively baking a batch of cookies, re-listening to the same early-2000s pop playlist, and stalking Mariah Carey's Twitter feed. 

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