Usher recently previewed a song from his highly-anticipated new album and the track got fans talking.
The tune is called “Confessions Part 3,” and the Atlanta-based crooner performed it during a set at the Cricket Lounge earlier this week.
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“Remember that time I was sitting up sick, couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night?” he sang. “You said, ‘Babe, let me take you to the ER.’ I said, ‘Nah, I’ma be alright.’”
In the next line, the singer sang that “the sickness I had was life. And I was fixed to keeping the decision to keep it knowing I had to get rid of it.”
The lyrics instantly led to speculation online, with many believing that Usher was referencing an abortion or referring to a sexually transmitted disease. The singer has been engaged in several lawsuits with people who accused the singer of exposing them to herpes. One case, was reportedly dropped in September 2019.
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However, Jermaine Dupri, Usher’s longtime producer who had been recording with the singer within the last year, stepped in to set the record straight.
“I see y’all trippin... CONFESSIONS PART 3 is from a females perspective,” he tweeted. “The song is about a girl cheatin’ on him and gettin’ pregnant by another man. She is then being stuck with the decision to keep or abort it. Now that he knows, Should he stay or Leave ???”
The song comes after the single “Confessions Part 2,” which Dupri produced with Bryan-Michael Cox for Usher’s 2004 album, “Confessions.” That tune, which followed the first part of “Confessions,” an album interlude, spurred speculation of its own.
At the time, fans believed that the lyrics, “My chick on the side said she got one on the way,” referenced Usher’s experience with TLC’s Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, with whom he had broken up in 2003 prior to the album’s release. The split was allegedly over infidelity.
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But Dupri has since cleared up that rumor.
"'Part II' was supposed to be fantasy: Usher didn't have kids; none of these things were going on. 'Part II' was all me, my whole life story, basically," he told Complex in 2014. "I just had gone through 'Part II' in real life, so it was like as soon as he said he wanted 'Part II,' the chorus was already on the edge of my lips. [I told him] OK, well, this is very right now; I can tell you exactly what 'Part II' is. So it [took me] like 30 minutes to write 'Part II.'"
