In July 2023, Keke Palmer and her baby daddy and ex-boyfriend Darius Jackson sparked one of social media’s many great debates. After Palmer was spotted (looking great, might I add) at an Usher concert that summer, Jackson took to X to share his disdain for the mother of his child’s outfit choice, triggering discourse about the “appropriateness” of her attire.
Though Jackson was very outspoken about the situation, Palmer had been relatively silent about her feelings on their viral moment–– until now. On Friday, May 9, the multihyphenate star released a new song titled “My Confessions” in which she spills all the tea on that moment and her breakup with Jackson.
“This one is personal. ‘My Confession’ is exactly what it sounds like—me giving voice to the feelings I buried,” Palmer wrote on Instagram about the song. “Sometimes the closure we need doesn’t come from a conversation—it comes from being honest with ourselves. That’s what this song is. My peace. My clarity. My way of letting go.”
The record, which lifts from and references Usher’s “Confessions Part II” was written by Palmer and her best friend of 22 years, Tayla Parx, who the “Nope” star says has seen her through every version of herself. Describing the track as “raw, emotional, and real,” Palmer takes listeners back to July 2023 and lyrically explains everything about how, at the time, Jackson had broken up with her, which is what prompted her to have a girls’ night.
“Summer ’23, we was in Vegas, right/Broke up with me and you hopped up on a flight/Was tryna find my way back to “alright”/So I figured that I’d have myself a girl’s night,” she sings. “48-hours later online/Made me a villain for sympathy but you lied, mm/But the truth is, in Vegas, we was already over, boo/Because of you.”
Throughout the song and its accompanying lyric video, Palmer references Jackson’s controversial tweets and even the reported tensions between her and his family.
“Your family, they don’t like me, that’s fine / But when did you get back on they side? / When I met you, you hated them like you hating me now.”
Similarly, she addresses the backlash and reactions to his criticism about her appearance at the Usher concert: “72-hours, now your feelings hurt/My fans was dragging you because you had the nerve/You almost turned me into a cliché/Thought having your baby would make me wanna stay.”
As the chorus notes, “F— your projections/These are my confessions,” Palmer explains how hard it is for her to tell her truth when she sings “saying this was hard for me / only speaking for my peace / truth hurts and this is mine.”
Since their breakup, Palmer has revealed the toxicity of her and Jackson’s relationship and how much she “hated” the media attention surrounding her relationship.
“It was my personal junk. It didn’t deserve a place in the center of something that I worked very hard to make encouraging and empowering,” she said, as previously reported by theGrio. “When it was happening, it was horrible because I could not get to the message of the story in real-time. Now, I’m able to articulate it, and I’m able to say what the story will be.”
From her memoir, “Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative,” to her upcoming album “Just Keke,” Palmer says she’s “not here to play perfect” but “to be honest” and tell her story.
