Songfacts®:

• Usher's father, Usher Raymond III, left the family when Usher was a year old, and he was brought up by his mother, and later his stepfather. On this song he sings about his dad's promiscuous ways and the consequences of growing up without his male birth parent.
• Usher Raymond III died of a heart attack in 2008. Usher told UK newspaper The Sun: "Sins Of My Father touches on different generations and the curses they must deal with and wanting to break it to change the course, so that my kids won't have to deal with it. It's a bit deep.
  
  "You never truly understand the perspective of anything until you have children yourself," he continued. "You realise that everything you do affects them. I was not raised with my father, so it was tough but I did reconcile before his death, which gave me great comfort. He had troubles but took responsibility for his actions."
• Usher had planned to collaborate with Amy Winehouse but the project was thwarted by the singer's death in July 2011. However, he still managed to hit the studio with her longtime producer, Salaam Remi, on this song. He explained to MTV UK: "You know working with Salaam Remi kind of came as a product of wanting to explore and try different things. I had been speaking with Amy Winehouse loosely about us working together and of course I knew Salaam Remi would probably be the best producer to do it because I felt like he would understand both of us and he had such success with her.I had conversations with my A&R, Mark Pitts about us working together," he continued. "Shortly after, unfortunately, we lost Amy Winehouse but it was still an opportunity for us to work together. So we got in and we worked on an incredible record called Sins Of My Father."