Keri Hilson reveals she felt “powerless” regarding the release of a 2009 track that dissed Beyoncé.
Keri Hilson discusses Beyoncé verse in “Turnin’ Me On” remix
The R&B singer-songwriter, who’s dropping her much-anticipated third album, We Need to Talk, on April 18, visited The Breakfast Club on Wednesday.
Around the 25-minute mark, Loren LaRosa brought up Hilson’s “Turnin’ Me On” remix, which contained lyrics taking shots at Beyoncé.
“Your vision cloudy if you think that you’re the best / You can dance, she can sing / But she need to move it to the left, left,” Hilson sang, referencing Beyoncé’s 2006 hit “Irreplaceable.” “She need to go have some babies / She needs to sit down, she fake.”
Hilson called the song a “regret” and insisted she didn’t write the verse. “Those are not my words,” she stated.
Hilson explained that while touring with Lil Wayne, producer Polow da Don, who she was signed to, pushed her to create a “Turnin’ Me On” remix and brought in another songwriter for the verse.
“The whole time I was brainstorming concepts like, ‘What would I say? How do I even remix this?'” she remembered, adding, “I come into the studio, and he plays me this verse. I immediately go, ‘I’m not saying that.'”
Hilson described herself as competitive but denied being a “dirty player,” noting that Polow believes in the “shock-jock mentality.”
“I tried to fight him on it and I started writing my own,” she went on. “But he—I want to be careful with my words—it was quite forceful.”
Hilson claimed the producer was threatening her career and possibly holding up the release of her debut album, In a Perfect World…
“The mistake I made was not continuing to fight,” she admitted. “But I was in tears, I was crying, I was dead set against doing that.
“I was young, really young. I felt I had no power, I felt I had no choice, but I did record my version which had nothing like that. It was on topic, the song is about men.”
Hilson mentioned that the songwriter “went on to become famous” but protected their identity.
“I had to eat that and I am still eating it to this day,” Hilson confessed. “Because I’m getting asked about that 15 or however many years—16, 17 years later, it’s like I’ve worn the scarlet letter, really.”
Two years after “Turnin’ Me On” came out, Hilson was accused of throwing shade at Beyoncé when she refused to hold a magazine featuring the 32-time Grammy winner on the cover.
“I didn’t want to hold no magazine of with her on [it],” Hilson told The Breakfast Club team. “I just froze, I just was, like, shook whenever anybody brought it up.”
“It’s a topic I don’t want to discuss in public because I don’t want to upset anyone,” she added. “I don’t want to make the situation even more awkward than it already was. I just wanted it to disappear.”
Who wrote the Beyoncé diss in Keri Hilson’s “Turnin’ Me On” remix?
After Hilson’s revelation, singer-songwriter Ester Dean stepped up and admitted she wrote the “Turnin’ Me On” verse, calling the track a “hit.” Dean later went on to co-write “Start Over” and “Countdown” for Beyoncé’s 2011 album 4.
Back in 2021, Hilson revealed that she and Beyoncé had finally talked and settled their issues about the song.
“I feel like she understood what happened, what had transpired and there was a bit of healing in that moment when we met. I take her as a very intuitive kind of soul, as am I,” Hilson told radio host Persia Nicole.
Hilson added, “She’s amazing. I’ve always felt that way, that’s the truth of the matter, but no one will believe that.”
