Keke Palmer recently shared that her ex, Darius Jackson, was the one who came up with their son Leodis’ name by blending their own names together.
Speaking on the House Guest podcast, Palmer opened up about how the name came to be, despite the “toxic dynamic” she previously described between them. “Darius actually made his name. He wanted both our names, which is so crazy,” she said. “So yeah, that was him trying to put like Darius and Lauren, like Leodis, like it was just too much, but I said, ‘Hey, let’s do it. It’s adorable.'”
“I was pregnant, anything went. It’s adorable… and then also it sounded like an old name,” Keke Palmer added. “He sounded like he was marching with [Martin Luther King Jr.]. It’s like Leodis Andrellton Jackson. He’s gonna be on somebody’s campaign.”
Just last month, Palmer addressed her ex Darius Jackson and their 2023 drama involving an Usher concert with the release of her song “My Confession.” The track, which samples Usher’s classic “Confessions Part II,” sees Keke telling her side of the story after Jackson publicly called her out over her interaction with Usher.
“Forty-eight hours later online / Made me a villain for sympathy but you lied / But the truth is in Vegas we was already over, boo,” she sings — pointing out they had already broken up when he criticized her online.
Later in the song, she touches on the complexity of their relationship and the birth of their son: “You almost turned me into a cliché / Thought having your baby would make me wanna stay.”
To clear up any doubt, Palmer confirmed on Instagram that the song was “exactly what it sounds like — me giving voice to the feelings I buried.”
“Sometimes the closure we need doesn’t come from a conversation — it comes from being honest with ourselves,” she wrote. “That’s what this song is. My peace. My clarity. My way of letting go… I’m not here to play perfect. I’m here to be honest. I’m just here to be Keke.”
