Keke Palmer Talks New Album 'Just Keke' and Gets Candid About Her Life

'Just Keke' is an honest R&B journey through the past few years of Keke's life.

Actress, singer, host, author, and cultural icon Keke Palmer has released her most personal body of musical work yet, Just Keke. The 18‑track, three‑act album (and its accompanying visual film) follows on the heels of her 2023 release, Big Boss, and marks a creative rebirth. It’s an unfiltered dive into her life’s most recent chapters – becoming a mother, public relationship drama, turning 30, and so much more.

“After everything I’ve been through recently, I asked myself ‘What do I have to say musically? And if I say anything, it has to be something real. I have to get to that real place to speak about it and face it. Which is hard when we go through things that change us. So for me, this album was a big boiling point of many different things.”

Co‑executive produced by Grammy‑nominated powerhouse Tayla Parx – Keke’s best friend and collaborator of 20+ years – each song on Just Keke reflects her unique voice and journey. Parx’s direction creates a cohesive narrative, which creates a proud display of artistic and emotional honesty. “She was the person I was willing to go down that road with,” Keke tells me. “She knows me. She knew me before all of my many changes.”

Keke describes Just Keke as “an evolution of everything I had to be and become to survive and grow as a person and artist.”

Feeling “Exposed”

When listening to the album, I felt a library of inspiration coming from R&B greats like Whitney Houston and Brandy (two of Keke’s idols). That culminates on “Exposed” – a very late 90s/early 2000s-inspired song that reminds me of Whitney’s “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay” and Brandy’s ‘Full Moon’ era. When I told Keke that “Exposed” was my favorite on that album, she lit up.

“When we were making “Exposed,” I was also working on the movie I’m doing with Boots Riley in Atlanta. When I came from set one day, Tayla and Kam [Parker] had the hook to “Exposed” done and I LOVED it! I was like ‘This is exactly what I want. This is the one!’ When I finished the song, I remember it reminding me of Whitney [the “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay“ visual] and I was like we have to reference that in the visual. Not just because of the look, but because of what she was talking about.

In my situation at the time, I was feeling exposed, and I feel like so many women know it’s like to feel exposed. It was so important to me that the song and visual didn’t just represent my story, but everybody who’s ever felt that way.

Other favorites come from the two singles “My Confession” and “Off Script.” Co‑written with Parx and Parker and produced by Albin Tengblad, “Off Script” addresses an ex‑lover with unfiltered emotion over a hard-hitting, soulful beat. “You was supposed to be my Stedman, instead you went on that baby daddy shit” is a line that every woman can relate to. Living as the opening track, “Off Script” captures the essence of embracing life as it unfolds.

“My Confession” is exactly that – a confessional about Keke’s love life and the events that played out very publicly over the past couple of years. Its soulful tone is a homage to Usher’s style (down to the “Confessions Part 2” interpolation), but through Keke’s narrative. It’s a bold way of reclaiming her story and giving a voice to feelings she had buried. “When we actually sat down to write the music, it just spilled out because we spent so much time talking throughout the process.”

As if the music weren’t personal enough, Palmer brought Just Keke to life with a short visual film, co-written and co-directed by Palmer herself. The film serves as a cinematic extension of the album’s themes — vulnerability, reinvention, and emotional reckoning. Much like her previous Big Boss visual album, Just Keke, the film, is another example of her commitment to visual storytelling as emotional truth.

‘Just Keke’ In Keke’s Own Words

With Just Keke, Palmer embraces her multiplicity unashamedly. It’s a courageous declaration: this is who she is now — in all her joy, pain, complexity, and clarity. It’s a visual album that allows Keke to utilize her talents in acting, comedy, hosting, and more to craft a story only she can tell.

‘Just Keke’ is all about fragmentation and integration. It’s about who you were before an incident and you you become after it. And we all have that constantly throughout life. Pieces of us change and we’re trying to figure out how to maintain who we were while also carrying something new.

It’s whimsical, it’s heartfelt, it’s loving, it’s forgiving and it’s gratious. That’s how I tell my story. That’s how choose to be who I want to be.