Keke Palmer Drops Raw Breakup Anthem ‘My Confession’

On Friday, May 9, the multi-talented singer and actress dropped a brand-new track called "My Confession," and let’s just say... she went there. The emotional song dives into her much-talked-about moment with Usher at his Las Vegas show — the one that blew up online and eventually led to her breakup with boyfriend Darius Jackson.

Shortly after the release, Palmer took to social media with a heartfelt message for her fans: it's "exactly what it sounds like — my giving voice to the feelings I buried."

She added, "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."

Palmer also gave a shoutout to her longtime bestie and co-writer: "I wrote this with @TaylaParx, my best friend of 22 years, who’s seen me through every version of myself. This track is raw, it’s emotional, and it’s real."

And she ended with the kind of honesty fans love her for: "I’m not here to play perfect. I’m here to be honest. I’m just here to be Keke."

The lyrics get real from the jump, as Palmer paints the picture of what really went down in Vegas — and according to her, the breakup had already happened. "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."

She calls out Jackson’s infamous response to her dancing with Usher — the one where he commented, "It's the outfit tho.. you a mom." In the chorus, she claps back: "F--- your projections/These are my confessions."

Verse two dives deeper into the drama, even touching on tension with Jackson’s 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."

She also reflects on the public fallout: "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."

Later, she gets vulnerable, singing, "saying this was hard for me / only speaking for my peace / truth hurts and this is mine."

Since the drama unfolded in July 2023, Palmer has spoken about it a few times. As for Usher, he told PEOPLE in August that the whole thing was really just "a pop moment" and "worth talking about."

"I think everybody's vision or a version of what they felt happened there just leads you back to just really having a good time in Las Vegas. And that's what I hope came out of it. Rather, it was a conversation of what was going on with us having fun in front of the audience or conversation about that song," he said.

He added, "Every night I'm thinking about how the world now is going to react to this moment that I'll have with whoever I'm choosing to sing to. But it was a pop moment, and it was fun to have at least conversation going and we just keep it light. I don't see anything negative happening in Las Vegas."

Palmer, on the other hand, told PEOPLE in October 2024 that she was caught off guard by how big the moment became: "I was just at a concert, doing what I do as an entertainer, creating a fun moment," she said. "How it became a storyline that me and Usher are in love, I don’t know."

Unfortunately, the situation got even messier after the social media firestorm. Allegations of domestic violence and a custody battle over their 2-year-old son, Leo, soon followed. Palmer was granted a domestic violence restraining order against Jackson.

Still, the two are now peacefully co-parenting. In her January interview with The Cut, Palmer shared that they're making it work for their son. But in her memoir, Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative, she didn’t sugarcoat the heartbreak, calling the breakup “the hardest thing I ever had to go through.”