It’s 4:45 p.m., and Keri Hilson has yet to eat. By the time she’s seated at the Four Seasons’ Brasserie Margot in Midtown — one of her favorite restaurants in Atlanta — she knows what she wants: lobster mac & cheese.
She’s never had it before, but Hilson insists on eating something hearty.
“It’s probably going to be the only meal I have today,” she says.
Hilson is finishing a day of press and still has several business calls to make. It’s late March — nearly two weeks before she drops her first album in almost 15 years.
For the Grammy-nominated R&B singer, this moment is more than a comeback. It’s a calling.
“I feel like a fragmented computer most days lately, but the feelings that do break through are gratitude and excitement and a little anxiousness,” she says.
“We Need to Talk: Love,” released on April 18, belatedly follows her 2010 sophomore album, “No Boys Allowed.” It’s the first of three installments, preceding “We Need to Talk: Drama” and “We Need to Talk: Redemption.” Both are slated to drop later this year.
It’s a hefty load after a long absence. But the three-album arc is partially for the fans who’ve never left Hilson’s side. And partially to underscore Hilson’s reintroduction to the industry.
Starting over can be scary. Instead of evading the fear, she’s addressing it headfirst, chin-down — as if she’s diving into a pool of thoughts that are too sacred to say aloud. But she says them anyway.
“Do I have what it takes? Am I still going to put in the same level of work ethic? Is my voice still there? Do I enjoy the way I look on camera anymore?” she says.
For the album roll-out, she dropped several videos on social media: makeshift therapy sessions with herself about opening her heart to love and returning to an industry that’s vastly changed since she left it.
That interiority bleeds onto “Grateful,” the opening song of “We Need to Talk: Love.”
“I hit rock bottom a few times/ from crawling back to walking in my purpose/ my power/ I think I had to give up music for a while,” the 42-year-old recites at the beginning of the song.
For the duration of the nine-track album, Hilson sings about vulnerability, her insecurities, choosing herself and embracing romance. Lead single “Bae” interpolates Hurricane Chris’ 2007 song “A Bay Bay” while echoing the bliss of falling in love. “Searchin,” which features Method Man (the LP’s sole guest artist), reveals that her quest for real love has no limits.
Standout track “Somethin (Bout U)” has an early 2000s feel that’s reminiscent of the pop-R&B sound Hilson became known for in her prime.
“I think it reminds people even more than ‘Bae’ does of that Keri Hilson sound, but it also has a vintage feel,” she says. “It’s retro, even further back than 2000s. I would say early ’80s, maybe late ’70s.”
Decatur, where it’s greater
Credit: Robb D. Cohen / www.robbsphotos.com
Credit: Robb D. Cohen / www.robbsphotos.com
Hilson’s sound is rooted in her hometown of Decatur, where she was raised in a middle-class family. Her dad, who died in 2020, was a real estate developer, and her mom continues to own Reading World Academy, a day care center.
On the east side, Hilson says she saw “every shade of Blackness.” The environment gave her a firm self-awareness and emboldened her to pursue her music dreams at an early age.
She won her first-grade talent show singing “Home” from “The Wiz.” While attending Tucker High School, she was in two girl groups (D’Signe and Pretty Toni) that disbanded before officially releasing any music. But the connections she made while in those groups led to her singing background or writing songs for stars, including Usher, Ciara and Ludacris.
While Hilson studied theater at Emory University, she was also part of the Atlanta-based songwriting/producer collective the Clutch, penning hits for Mary J. Blige and Britney Spears.
In conversation, it’s her Atlanta roots that make Hilson’s hazel eyes widen. Mid-sentence, she spots former WNBA player Tamika Catchings entering the restaurant, prompting her to reminisce about playing small forward on her high school team. Hilson shares that Emory scouted her to play basketball, but she chose to focus on music.
Her relationship with her hometown is so deep that even the slightest connection can trigger a whirlwind of childhood memories.
When her name comes up as being a topic on a recent episode of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” — via newbie Shamea Morton Mwangi, Hilson’s Pretty Toni groupmate — Hilson goes on a tangent about their parents being friends and hosting house parties as teens: “I don’t know if she ever went to mine, but I was definitely at hers.”
She smiles when revealing how, as a teenager, she almost signed with Atlanta star Usher’s now-defunct US Records. “He and I are friends, and we can laugh about it now. I’m like, ‘You were just too late.’”
Hilson says she’s “so Atlanta” that she can’t see herself living anywhere else.
“It doesn’t even sound right for me to not have an anchor here in Atlanta.”
After writing hits for others, Hilson became a main attraction in 2007 as a featured artist on rapper Timbaland’s “The Way I Are,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. She later signed with Timbaland and producer Polow Da Don (through their respective labels, Mosley Music Group and Zone 4 via Interscope Records), who released her debut album, “In a Perfect World,” in 2009.
The LP boasted hits including “Energy,” “Turnin Me On”(featuring Lil Wayne) and “Knock You Down” (featuring Kanye West and Ne-Yo). Hilson continued the Atlanta tradition of seamlessly blending hip-hop and R&B while adding her own EDM flair.
Aljamaal Jones, Hilson’s manager and fellow Atlantan, says her sound, best shown on “Turnin Me On,” always felt “very Decatur.” Jones says Hilson’s next album, “Drama,” carries that same momentum.
“That (song) is something that I would have been jamming to at the skating rink or riding around off Wesley Chapel Road or South Hairston in Stone Mountain,” he says. “That’s where you get the ‘Ms. Keri Baby’ (Hilson’s tag that she’d sing to introduce herself on earlier songs), the one who would’ve been at the Southwest DeKalb talent show watching us get down.”
From 2007 to 2011, Hilson had an impeccable run that included more hit records, another successful album, Grammy nominations and BET Award wins.
Earlier this year, Billboard ranked Hilson at No. 87 on its list of top female artists of the 21st century.
“I needed to see that,” Hilson says about the list. “I needed that to be the case. I needed to gain confidence again. When you step away from things that you love, you can lose confidence with it, so that gave me a little boost.”
Falling into freedom
But while she was gaining so much, Hilson admits that she started to lose herself.
Label woes, relationship drama and simply navigating fame in her early 20s became overwhelming.
“I had been pursuing music for a very long time by the time (my second album came out) at the height of that success, so I deserved a break,” she shared. “But I also realized like, ‘Oh, I don’t really know myself.’”
Then, there was the backlash to a leaked remix of 2009’s “Turnin Me On” that has followed her for more than a decade. The remix featured the lines, “She can sing/ But she need to move it to the left, left,” which fans perceived to be a diss to Beyoncé (whose 2006 hit song “Irreplaceable” includes “to the left, to the left” in the hook).
Over the years, Hilson has repeatedly stated that she was forced to record the song, didn’t write the verse and made amends with Beyoncé. But that hasn’t stopped people from discussing it. Hilson, via a rep, refused to talk about it during an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution but, two weeks later, addressed it on the “Breakfast Club‚” reiterating that recording the song was a “regret.”
After the interview went viral, Ester Dean, who has written songs for Beyoncé, revealed herself as one of the songwriters on the “Turnin Me On” remix — making the situation a trending topic all over again.
Hilson says the incident and several other factors, including the feeling of being controlled by label executives at a young age, triggered a depression.
“I don’t want any mistake to overshadow (my career),” she says. “This is my purpose. This is why I’m here. This is what I’ve been aiming to do since I was 3 years old. But everyone wants to talk about this. That’s a really disappointing position to be in.”
Thanks to years of therapy and spiritual retreats, Hilson is on a path to healing. Things that bring her joy now include painting, cooking and gardening.
She didn’t release any music during her hiatus, but she did get deep into her acting bag — appearing in films including “Think Like a Man,” “Riddick” and “Almost Christmas.” Last month, she starred alongside Keshia Chanté in the Lifetime film “Fame: a Temptations Story.”
Now that Hilson is back to making music, she’s fully independent. She established Audible Art Club, an imprint of Create Music Group, around 2016. As someone who started her career writing hits for others and signed with two labels, Hilson feels empowered by calling her own shots.
“I had freedom to gain,” she says.
The 27-year-old Keri Hilson was eager and hardworking but often too trusting, the singer admits. Today, she’s learning to give herself grace for past missteps while stepping into her own power.
“You can bring your interests, your ideas, your essence and your truth. You can bring your traits and all these things to the table and not have to sacrifice so much of yourself for the interests of others.”
Credit: Ryan Fleisher
Credit: Ryan Fleisher
That level of authenticity is why music journalist Keithan Samuels, who runs the popular site Rated R&B, describes Hilson’s new music as a return instead of a comeback.
“She created music to withstand the test of time,” he says. “To be honest, if she didn’t come out with another album, I feel like I was fully fed with her two albums that came out.”
Release dates haven’t been finalized for the new installments of her three-album arc, but she guarantees they’ll be out before the end of the year. Some of the music was recorded as far back as 2012 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles and Atlanta studios including Sessions and Astro.
Hilson revealed that Young Thug (before his 2022 arrest) and Pastor Troy recorded features on her upcoming albums — paying homage to her Atlanta roots.
“I’m doing this for my city. Decatur. Atlanta. Lithonia. Those young girls that knew where I came from that I inspired that one day maybe wanted to follow in my footsteps, I’m doing this for them.”
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