Ester Dean and Keri Hilson have opened up about how a song perceived as a diss to Beyoncé over a decade ago came to be and why there is some regret about it.
It’s amazing how verifying a decades-old story about a perceived slight toward Beyoncé can turn into a week-long fact-check and accountability session, but that’s exactly what happened between Keri Hilson and Ester Dean.
To recap briefly: In promotion of her new album, set to drop on April 18, Keri Hilson made a stop at “The Breakfast Club” to sit down with Charlamagne Tha God, Loren Lorosa, and DJ Envy. During the conversation, the leaked 2009 remix to Hilson’s song “Turnin Me On” came up—perceived at the time as a diss record aimed at Beyoncé—and she was asked how she felt about it looking back. She acknowledged that she felt regret and shared how she didn’t even write the song but was forced to make it, and it was leaked by the song’s producer, Polow Da Don.
Dean went uncredited as a writer on the track, something unheard of now as Dean is a very popular and well-known songwriter—and actress; she was great in the “Pitch Perfect” film series—and would eventually work with Beyoncé along with a slew of other artists like Rihanna, Katy Perry, Mary J. Blige, Ciara, Usher, Selena Gomez, and the list goes on.
The entire hubbub led to days worth of discussion and discourse about who was and was not at fault, how something like this could happen, and how an artist could be forced to sing a song they were uncomfortable with. Polow Da Don has yet to offer his side of the story.
For her part, Ester Dean acknowledged that she wrote the record but implied that she and Hilson wrote it together, leading to Hilson clocking that tea and telling Dean to get her facts straight. Hilson made it clear that she and Dean didn’t write the song together, as Hilson contributed a few lines intended to make the song’s lyrics fit the song’s subject matter.
In an attempt to clear the air and get the story as right as she could, Dean shared an open letter on Instagram explaining the entire situation, hopefully concluding a saga that nobody saw coming on Monday.
In her post, titled, “An Open Letter from Ester Dean: ‘For Ker. For Creatives. For The Record,” Dean starts out, “I’ve stayed quiet for a long time, but I believe in telling the truth—especially when the internet starts telling its own version of the story.”
Throughout the post, Dean shares a bit about her backstory, moving from Atlanta to Los Angeles, and how the “Turnin Me On” remix came to be:
“One night, Polow asked me to write a remix verse for Keri Hilson – something street, something for the culture. He left the room, and I sat there trying different ideas until I landed on these lines…. ‘She need to go have some babies, she needs to sit down, she fading.’ Tacky? Yes. Forced? No.
That was me. I wasn’t in the room with Keri writing this together. I didn’t know her personally. She was already a star. I was just a writer trying to earn my place. I did my job and left.
Keri came in another time and wrote her own verse – her pen, her voice…I went on to write on both of Keri’s albums. She even showed love and did a cameo in my ‘Drop It Low’ video. I even came on stage with her once. But life took us in different directions, like it often does.”
After clearing the air on whether she and Keri collaborated on the lyrics, Dean then shared that she was basically hungry, trying to make her bones in the industry, and would eventually work with Beyoncé. She also said there was never any beef or industry mess. She was doing her job.
To close out her open letter, Dean got a bit reflective and made sure that people know there’s no issue with Hilson and that it seemed that they both learned lessons.
“Why Speak Now? Because while our stories may look similar now, back then they weren’t. Keri was speaking on big platforms I didn’t have access to – and it was her story to tell, not mine. I stayed writing. No hate. No shade. Just truth. What Keri went through was sad. She’s a great artist, a beautiful spirit, and she deserves grace. She took her lessons. I’ll take mine. Respect always.”
Hopefully, everybody can move on after this, and perhaps Polow Da Don will share his own perspective.
But for now, Keri Hilson’s new album, “We Need to Talk” is set to release on April 18, 2025.
!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||[],g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“has-featured-video”,”true”)})}();
