Keyshia Cole and Ashanti’s Long-Awaited Verzuz Battle Finally, Finally Goes Down

Well, the Verzuz battle between Keyshia Cole and Ashanti finally went down on Thursday, January 21, and they certainly were happy to make us wait for it. The R&B songstresses were initially scheduled to go toe-to-toe on December 12, but had to cancel at the last minute due to the fact that Ashanti tested positive for COVID-19 hours before the event. After another postponement in early January, tonight the ladies were finally able to go hit for hit. Appropriately mimicking Verzuz battles from the early days of quarantine, Cole and Ashanti were not in the same room but videoing in from separate locations seated upon literal thrones backed by bottles of Ciroc and bags of Doritos (red for Ashanti, blue for Keyshia).

Even though fans had to wait six extra weeks for this battle to go down, Keyshia Cole was apparently not in a hurry to arrive, as she showed up over an hour late for the event, leaving Ashanti to sit alone on her throne, listen to the DJ, and do some light crowd work while she tried to get Keyshia on the phone. The late start got the proceedings off to somewhat a rocky start, with fans noticing that Cole seemed somewhat agitated at the top. On top of that, some major sound issues at the beginning got everything off on somewhat of the wrong foot, but as per usual, the power of the music and the songs ultimately shone through. Keyshia broke out some of her classics, like “I Should Have Cheated,� “Love,� “Trust and Believe,� and “Give it Up to Me� with Sean Paul, which is famously featured on the Step Up 2 soundtrack. Ashanti, who slyly dropped that she sang wrote songs for Jennifer “Let’s Get Loud� Lopez, decided to really go for it with the singing, laying into her classics like “What’s Luv,� “Foolish,� “Baby,� “Rain on Me� (not that one), and closing out with all-time classic “Always on Time� featuring her main man, Fyre Festival’s Ja Rule. Obviously, both ladies took the time to play a new track, with Keyshia plugging “I Don’t Wanna Be in Love� while Ashanti dropped her new song “235 (2:35 I Want You).� You can check out the whole thing on Verzuz’s official Instagram page and decide if the battle was worth the wait.