"I found a stack of Polaroids" — Kehlani recalls the time she caught an ex cheating on her

In a recent interview with Hot97's Nessa, popular singer Kehlani recalled when she caught one of her exes cheating on her. She described how she found Polaroid images of other women in her ex's travel bag when she was around 19 or 20 years old.

"This is actually psychotic. It's actually diabolical. I found a stack of Polaroids of all the women that he cheated on me with. He was keeping them in Polaroid form in his travel bag. I wish I was lying," she said.

She mentioned she discovered the photos when her ex-partner and she were traveling and added:

"I was trying to clean. We were not in town. We weren't in town and I was like putting things away. I was not the girl I am today that would be like, 'Yo. Wow.' I was definitely like, 'Oh my God. Terrifying.' And I threw them away."

Kehlani did not name the ex she was referring to, but described him as a "diabolical man." She also stated that she did not know how to deal with the situation at the time.

She told Hot97 that she knew one of the women in the images she found. The singer also recalled that her partner did not mention the incident to her and she "never said anything."

"There were crazier things that happened in that situation so it checks out," she added.

While Kehlani did not take any names, netizens have been speculating who she was referring to in the recent interview.

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Kehlani's new song Better Not allegedly refers to a cheating incident

The topic of cheating came up during Kehlani's interview with Hot97's Nessa as her new song, Better Not, allegedly described a similar incident. The host asked the artist about the "craziest" thing she had caught someone doing before she spoke about finding the Polaroids.

In the song, the singer wrote about the night she caught a supposed partner in "somebody's Benz" and hoped she would not find him "doing that sh*t again." The lyrics said:

"I almost died the night when I caught you in somebody's Benz (Ooh, ooh) / I better not catch you doing that sh*t again / And you're not wrong, 'cause you're not mine / I would choose this dance with you in every life / Though we're just a little more than friends / I better not catch you doing that sh*t again."

The track is part of the singer's fourth studio album, Crash, which dropped on June 21, 2024, via Atlantic Records. The album came two years after her previous project, Blue Water Road.

Speaking about her new album, Kehlani told Essence that she was earlier afraid of how she was judged as a musician. However, for her latest album, she let go of her reservations and was open about her feelings.

“For a long time, I’ve been not afraid of how I’ve been perceived musically, but I had a lot of being very apologetic in my personhood, for who I am, for anything I’ve done, for anything I had to be corrected on for any way I’ve shown up in the world. In this album specifically, I am just gonna talk and not hold back. I’m going to talk as if I was talking to my very best friend,” she said.

Crash consists of 13 songs conveying different moods and emotions. The singer revealed in her interview with the publication that the track Groove Theory was the first one she recorded.

The publication asked Kehlani what she wanted the consciousness of the album to look like, and the singer mentioned that she wanted it to feel like "an anti-hero trip to Vegas."

"It is all about different explorations of the story we could create. Every time we found a missing component, it was like sushi; we crafted it together," she continued.

The tracks are inspired by the chaotic nature of the city and capture all the emotions one experiences during a night there. Speaking more about Vegas and the special connection she shares with the city, Kehlani said it was a "perfectly juxtaposed place." The singer also referred to her new album as her "wild, Wild West soundtrack" as she spoke about crafting it together meticulously.