So, Keke Palmer’s Music Video Was Actually Hard-Launching Her Breakup

In true Keke Palmer fashion, she turned her breakup into a full multimedia event. On Aug. 16, Palmer starred in a shady music video dissing her boyfriend Darius Jackson’s well-documented insecurities about how she dresses. But the video for Usher’s song “Boyfriend” should have really been called “Ex-Boyfriend,” because right after it dropped, reports surfaced that Palmer had broken up with Jackson a while back.

Entertainment Tonight reported that Palmer and Jackson ended things “shortly after [Darius] called her out on Twitter for her outfit at the Usher concert.” The would have been a month ago, when on July 5, Jackson commented on a photo of Palmer in a sheer dress at Usher’s Las Vegas concert, “It’s the outfit tho.. you a mom.” He continued to disapprove of his girlfriend’s look in a series of followup tweets. “We live in a generation where a man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others & he gets told how much of a hater he is,” Jackson wrote. “This is my family & my representation. I have standards & morals to what I believe. I rest my case.”

At the time, Palmer stayed quiet on the controversy, only slyly referencing it by dropping new merch that read, “I’m A Motha.” It wasn’t until a little over a month later that Palmer responded to her ex’s comments in Usher’s “Boyfriend” video.

“Dammit, I missed the show,” Palmer says towards the end. “And I’m so tired. I am a mother, after all.” Palmer then gives the camera a big wink, just to really get her point across.

In the wake of the “Boyfriend” video, a source told People that Jackson had “moved on,” but that he and Palmer were still co-parenting together despite the split: “You don't have to be in the same household to be good parents.”

The couple had been together for two years, first meeting and going Instagram official in the summer of 2021. In February 2023, they welcomed their son Leo.