Keri Hilson Shares ‘Regret’ Over Beyoncé Diss Track: ‘I Felt I Had No Power’

Keri Hilson says she felt “powerless” about the release of a 2009 song that included a diss of Beyoncé.

Keri Hilson addresses Beyoncé verse in “Turnin’ Me On” remix

The R&B singer-songwriter, who’s releasing her long-awaited third studio album, We Need to Talk, on April 18, stopped by The Breakfast Club on Wednesday.

Around the 25-minute mark, Loren LaRosa recalled Hilson’s “Turnin’ Me On” remix, in which the vocalist aimed some lines at Beyoncé.

“Your vision cloudy if you think that you’re the best / You can dance, she can sing / But she need to move it to the left, left,” Hilson sang, referencing Beyoncé’s 2006 single “Irreplaceable.” “She need to go have some babies / She needs to sit down, she fake.”

Hilson called the song a “regret” and denied that she wrote the verse. “Those are not my words,” she said.

Hilson added that while she was touring with Lil Wayne, producer Polow da Don, to whom Hilson was signed, urged her to make a “Turnin’ Me On” remix and tapped another songwriter for the verse.

“The whole time I had been writing concepts like, ‘What would I say? How do I even remix this?'” she recalled, continuing, “I come into the studio, and he plays me this verse. I’m automatically like, ‘I’m not saying that.'”

Hilson then called herself competitive but denied being a “dirty player,” adding that Polow believes in the “shock-jock mentality.”

“I tried to fight him on it and I began writing my own,” she continued. “But he—I want to be careful with the word I use—it was quite forceful.”

Hilson alleged that the producer was threatening her career and possibly sabotaging the release of her debut album, In a Perfect World…

“The mistake that I made was not continuing to fight,” she continued. “But I was in tears, I was crying, I was adamant that I did not want to do that.

“I was young, I was super young. I felt I had no power, I felt I had no choice, but I did record my version which had nothing like that. It was on subject, the song is about men.”

Hilson said that the songwriter “went on to become famous” but protected their identity.

“I had to eat that and I am still eating it to this day,” Hilson said. “Because I’m getting asked about that 15 however many years 16, 17 years later, it’s like I’ve worn the scarlet letter, really.”

Two years after “Turnin’ Me On” dropped, Hilson was accused of shading Beyoncé when she refused to hold a magazine with the 32-time Grammy winner on the cover.

“I didn’t want to hold no magazine of with her on [it],” Hilson told The Breakfast Club crew. “I just froze, I just was, like, shook whenever anybody brought it up.”

“It’s a conversation I don’t want to have publicly just because I don’t want to piss anybody off,” she continued. “I don’t want to make things even more weird than they already were. I just wanted it to go away.”

Who wrote the Beyoncé diss in Keri Hilson’s “Turnin’ Me On” remix?

Following Hilson’s comments, singer-songwriter Ester Dean admitted to writing the “Turnin’ Me On” verse and called the song a “hit.” Dean would go on to co-write “Start Over” and “Countdown” on Beyoncé’s 2011 album 4.

In 2021, Hilson said that she and Beyoncé had a conversation and cleared the air about the song.

“I feel like she understood what happened, what had transpired and there was a bit of healing in that moment when we met. I take her as a very intuitive kind of soul, as am I,” Hilson told radio host Persia Nicole.

Hilson continued, “She’s amazing. I’ve always felt that way, that’s the truth of the matter, but no one will believe that.”