Keri Hilson found fame in the late 2000s and became a household name when she released her debut album in 2009. Just over a year later, she dropped her second album, but it wasn’t as critically successful as her first one.
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After that, Keri reportedly went through some dark times in her personal life and stopped releasing new music. She took a break from the limelight and still hasn’t released a third album to this day. Keri revealed on Twitter that after her fast rise to fame, she began struggling with a conflict in her private life.
Keri Allegedly Had Beef With Beyonce
It reportedly began in 2009 when the singer released a remix to her song Turnin’ Me On. According to Distractify, she had some shady lyrics in one of the verses, which some people believed were directed at Beyonce.
In the single, she sang- ‘Your vision cloudy if you think that you da best, you can dance, she can sing, but need to move it to the left.’ Beyonce’s fans took the ‘move it to the left’ line as a reference to the lyrics from Beyonce’s song Irreplaceable.
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In Turnin’ Me On, Keri also rapped that whoever she was singing about needed to go have some babies and sit down. Beyonce’s online followers weren’t happy with Keri’s supposed diss toward their favorite singer, and they started to troll her. However, she insisted that the song was not about Beyonce.
Life & Style reported that in a 2009 interview, Keri said she was not jealous of anybody’s career and was a fan of Beyonce’s. She claimed the song was about anybody who tried to take her down and didn’t want to see her succeed.
Things got more complicated for Keri a couple of years later. She was being interviewed by Juicy Magazine on the red carpet of the 2011 Soul Train Music Awards. Celebrities were asked to hold up a copy of Juicy Magazine that had a picture of Beyonce and Jay Z on the cover.
When Keri saw who was on the cover, she apologized and said she wouldn’t hold it up. Once again, this was seen as a slight on Beyonce. People thought she was throwing shade at her for no good reason, and she began to get even more hatred online.
Keri Faced an Overwhelming Amount of Backlash on Social Media
In 2013, Keri expressed how much she’d been struggling with all the trolling. She tweeted that people had no idea what their hateful words could do to someone’s spirit. Keri said that it’d been years of verbal bullying from strangers all day long, and enough was enough.
She continued by posting that she had her reasons and that, as for her mistakes, God had dealt with her. Life & Style reported that some online users took that last line to mean that she admitted that being shady toward Beyonce had negatively affected her career.
In an interview with Hip Hollywood, Keri explained that she didn’t have beef with any female artist. She thought it was interesting that she lived in such a gullible world. Keri later confessed that she was going through a lot of other things in the early 2010s, so she found it hard to be creative during that difficult period in her life.
While speaking on the R&B Money podcast, she shared that there was so much stress, depression, and division among her team. She added that it was one thing after the next, and then her dad passed away.
She told the podcast hosts that when a person wasn’t struggling, they didn’t have to force things out. They could take their time and make sure it was what they wanted to present.
Online Sources Spread Rumors About Her Suposed Upcoming Album
In 2016, people thought that Keri was getting close to releasing her third album when a press release announced that the album was titled L.I.A.R (Love Is A Religion). It also revealed the name of one of the singles from the upcoming album, – Again. However, REVOLT reported that the press release was a fake.
Keri took to Twitter to share her frustration with the situation. In one Tweet, she wrote that whoever leaked the news had good information, L.I.A.R was the album name, but it was just not ready.
In another post, she claimed someone was deliberately working against her and taking advantage of the support from her fans.
During her 2023 interview on the R&B Money Podcast, Keri announced that she was planning to release a new album. She told them that she was not done. She took a second, and a lot of things happened that prevented it.
Keri explained that she’d blamed it on one thing, but really it was years of struggle. She added that she fought through that, and she was free and ready. Keri confessed that she’d been able to show her new music to an unnamed legend in the industry who described it as tall and mighty.
According to her IMDB page, Keri has also been focusing on her acting career more in the last few years. She appeared in a number of TV movies between 2021 and 2023.
Keri Is Open to Collaborating with Beyonce
Life & Style reported that in 2021, Keri revealed that she and Beyonce had cleared things up between them. While speaking on Instagram Live to radio host Persia Nicole, she revealed that they’d finally spoken about what happened.
She shared that there was a bit of healing when they met and that Beyonce was amazing. She added that she’d always felt that way about her, but no one would believe that. Keri also said that collaborating with her would be a very fun experience if she were open to it.
Before she released her own music, Keri made a name for herself by writing songs for some major artists. She wrote successful songs for performers like Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, Usher, and The Pussycat Dolls.
In 2009, Keri became a two-time Grammy nominee. Her debut album In A Perfect World reached number 4 on the US Billboard 200, and she was nominated for Best New Artist. Her hit single Knock You Down, which featured Ne-Yo and Kanye West, made it to number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned them a Grammy nomination for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration.
Keri’s second album No Boys Allowed, debuted at no.11 on the charts. It received mixed reviews and generally did not have the same kind of success as In A Perfect World.
