My Boo

In this duet between Usher and Alicia Keys, they play a couple who have split up, but still have strong feelings for each other. Usher explains that they got together when they were very young, and now that she's with another man, it's tearing him up, but he'll always consider her his boo (special girl). Keys explains that she feels the same way, and that even though there is another man in her life, Usher will always be her boo.

This song brought the Boo back after a long absence. The term "boo" (derived from the French "beau," meaning beautiful), caught on in the mid-'90s, and in 1996 the one-hit-wonder Ghost Town DJ's went to #31 US with a different song called "My Boo." That same year, The Almighty RSO had a modest hit with "You Could Be My Boo," but that was the last of the charting Boo songs until this Usher/Alicia Keys collaboration. The connection between the 1996 "My Boo" and the 2004 song is Jermaine Dupri: he released the former on his So So Def label, and he produced the later.

Jermaine Dupri, Alicia Keys and Usher wrote this song with Manuel Seal and Adonis Shropshire. Seal, who often worked with Dupri, also co-wrote Usher's "You Make Me Wanna"; Shropshire's co-writes include "And I" for Ciara and "Last Chance" for Ginuwine.