Teddy Riley and Babyface's Verzuz battle finally went down on Instagram Live last night (April 20th). Although the battle started with some minor technical difficulties things got started and celebrities like Michelle Obama, Tyrese, Queen Latifah, Keyshia Cole, Skai Jackson, Rashida Jones, Pusha-T, Gabrielle Union, Diddy, Jadakiss, Fat Joe, Snoop Dogg, Raekwon, and more tuned in.
Reports say that Face and Teddy broke the IG Live record for the most viewers, with 512,000 people watching.
Babyface played songs like Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love To You,” Tevin Campbell‘s “Can We Talk?,” and Bobby Brown‘s “Every Little Step” while Riley played Hi-Five‘s “I Like The Way,” Michael Jackson‘s “Jam,” and Guy's “I Like” and “Let's Chill.”
After playing Teddy played SWV's “Right Here (Human Nature remix),” — which samples MJs “Human Nature,”Babyface told Teddy a story about Michael Jackson. He said, “One time, Michael called me and said, ‘Babyface, do you know who Halle Berry is?' I said, ‘Yeah, I know Halle Berry’. He said, ‘Could you do me a favor? I want you to call her because I want to take her out on a date.’bI said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘Call her, I want to take her out on a date.’ So I said, ‘Let me reach out’ and I reached out for him, for the agent because I didn’t have Halle Berry’s number.”
He continued, “I called and gave the message and the manager’s like, ‘What?” and I said, ‘Yeah, he wants to take her out on a date.’ And then, I was waiting to hear back from Halle and I can’t tell you exactly what Halle said, but I imagine it probably would have been something like this…” Babyface then played a clip of Halle’s voice from the movie Boomerang and it asked, “You know, what do you know about love? What do you possibly think you know about love?”
Other notable moments include Babyface telling Teddy how much Michael loved him, Babyface giving an acoustic performance “When Can I See You Again.” Face also threw a little shade after Teddy played Janet Jackson's “I Get So Lonely (remix),” saying, “Oh, did you write that, produce it, or remix it?” After Teddy told him he remixed it, Face said, “Oh, I didn’t know we could do remixes. I don’t do remixes, maybe that’s why.”
The battle ended after technical difficulties ensued again, but at the end of the evening, fans agreed that the winner of the battle was R&B music. Meanwhile, Billboard declared Babyface the winner!