How Usher earned a hit singing about Jermaine Dupri’s infidelities
Jermaine Dupri is an industry name and has worked with the best of the best. From the likes of Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey to Nate Dogg and Ludacris, the rapper, songwriter, producer, entrepreneur, and DJ has done it all.
Dupri has been behind many of the classic R&B tracks of the 1990s and 2000s and, in more recent times, has worked with the likes of Drake and Bryson Tiller. The record producer and songwriter still remains in high demand as a result of his prior success and continues to make huge contributions to hip-hop culture from behind the scenes.
However, some of his most impactful works came in the form of his contributions to Confessions, the 2004 Usher album that boasted hit tracks such as ‘Caught Up’, ‘Burn’ and ‘Yeah’.
That said, one of the songs sung by Usher on the project was based on a real-life situation that Dupri once found himself in. When Confessions hit stores, critics believed that it was Usher baring his sins, but much of it was by Jermaine Dupri’s love triangles.
One of the tracks on the album entitled ‘Confessions Part II’ hears Usher singing about getting his mistress pregnant. Rumours swirled about who it may have been, but Jermaine Dupri, who was one of the writers and producers of the song, later confirmed that the song was about his personal previous tribulations and not Usher’s.
During an appearance on Vlad TV with DJ Vlad, Dupri opened up about the album and ‘Confessions Part II’ in particular, unveiling, “Yeah pretty much, yeah my life! Typical story of a man…this is real life. I was in a relationship, but the story in the song was still written so you guys would question it wasn’t verbatim to my story.”
While explaining the process of writing the song, Dupri disclosed that he purposefully changed some of the details to make the track more enthralling for listeners. Explaining what he was trying to achieve with the lyrics, Dupri told DJ Vlad, “The bulk of the story was having a girl, meeting somebody else, and having a baby the other girl handing to tell her that I’m having a baby by someone I just met.”
Dupri added, “When Usher says ‘it’s the toughest thing I had to do in my life’ and it was…In real life, it wasn’t like I ever cheated on the girl. I had a girlfriend for a long time, we broke up, and I met somebody in the midst of it, and that quick moment of me meeting the girl, we had a baby, and I went back to the girl.”
“Confessions Part II” was released as the third single from the album of the same title, and it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, where it stayed for two weeks, making it the album’s third consecutive top-charting single.