Keri Hilson Artistfacts

December 5, 1982
Keri Hilson was a popular songwriter and featured artist for about five years before she put out her first solo album in 2009. Her first feature to chart was in 2004 on "Hey Now (Mean Muggin)" with Xzibit. Her first hit as a songwriter for a track she didn't sing on was "4 Minutes" by Avant in 2006. In 2007 she co-wrote and featured on the #3 Timbaland hit "The Way I Are" and co-wrote the #2 Ludacris/Mary J. Blige collaboration "Runaway Love." She also wrote for Britney Spears ("Break The Ice") that year.
From 2007-2011, Hilson showed up all over the place as a solo artist, songwriter and featured artist. She looks great on camera, so she also appeared in lots of music videos, even for songs she didn't work on. Examples include Usher's "Love in This Club" and Ne-Yo's "Miss Independent."
Hilson pulled away from music around 2012 when she battled a depression that lasted several years. In a panel discussion on mental health in hip-hop, she explained, "I was bearing the weight of some personal and professional mistakes, and they just weighed so heavy on my spirit. I was just not myself, although I was at the mountaintop of my life really. I was at the pinnacle, but I was severely unhappy, and then I decide to jump out of an 11-year relationship... bad decision, bad timing."

"It all just spiraled," she added. "I was literally on stage crying."
Hilson stayed almost entirely out of the music industry from 2012 until 2025, when she released her third album, We Need To Talk. She did do some acting during this time, appearing in the 2016 film Almost Christmas and in a handful of TV movies on Lifetime, BET and VH1.
She was born and raised in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. This was a great place to be a hip-hop music-maker - the scene was thriving in the late '90s and early '00s as Hilson was getting started. One of her major local connections was to the producer Polow da Don, who became her main collaborator. Polow did a lot of work with Ciara, Usher and Ludacris.
Hilson had a hit in 2008 called "Turnin' Me On" that caused some problems for her when an unofficial remix found its way to the internet. In the remix, she goes on the attack with lines like:

Go 'head and tell these folks how long I've been writing your songs
I've been putting you on, just check the credits, ho

That would seem to indicate Ciara, but Hilson also sings "move it to the left," a seeming reference to Beyoncé, who sang "to the left" in her hit "Irreplaceable." Hilson tried to play down the diss but was asked about it in a lot of interviews. She cleared the air in 2025 when she appeared on The Breakfast Club, where she explained that her producer, Polow da Don, convinced her to record those vocals, which she didn't write. It caused her a lot of anxiety over the years, and didn't reflect her views at all. She's actually a big fan of Beyoncé and never meant to diss her.
Hilson had a memorable and surreal encounter with Prince. At an award show afterparty, Prince's security approached her and said he wanted to meet her. He appeared from behind a white curtain, spoke briefly with her, and then left the same way, an experience she described as "so... Prince!" She has called it one of the few times she was truly starstruck.

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