Songfacts®:

• Prior to releasing her hit debut single "Fallin'," Alicia Keys was introduced to urban contemporary radio with the promotional single "Girlfriend" in early 2001. In the lyrics, she shares her suspicions about her boyfriend's bond with a close female friend and admits she's jealous of the relationship.
  
  The song was reissued in 2002 as the fourth single from Songs In A Minor. It peaked at #24 on the UK Singles Chart, and #82 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in the US.
• Keys wrote this with rapper Jermaine Dupri and R&B songwriter Joshua Thompson (Luther Vandross, Babyface). Dupri, who also co-produced the track with Keys, is the son of Michael Mauldin, who was the president of Columbia Records' Urban Division when Keys signed to the label at 15. Mauldin was one of her biggest advocates, so when he left the label, the little creative freedom she had went with him. She found another supporter in Arista Records founder Clive Davis, who signed her to his new label, J Records, when she was 18 and supported her vision.
• This is built around an interpolation from "Brooklyn Zoo," a 1995 song by Ol' Dirty Bastard of Wu-Tang Clan (because of the sample, Ol' Dirty Bastard, whose real name is Russell Jones, and his Wu-Tang groupmate Robert "RZA" Diggs received a songwriting credit).
  
  Keys also sings a line from the beginning of that song, which she regrets because of its use of the N-word, a slur she has sworn off uttering ever since. Although she had no problem using the word as a Black teen recording an album that might never come to fruition, she changed her mind by the time Songs In A Minor dropped a few years later.
  
  "At the time, in the privacy of a studio when I was creating that song - and long before I was sure anyone would hear any of my music - I thought it sounded so fresh because it was such a memorable part of the original record," she recalled in her 2020 memoir, More Myself.
  
  "But years later, when the record came out and I realized the entire world heard me saying that word, it shook me in a way it never had. Before then, I hadn’t thought about the fact that millions would hear me use and endorse it. It was at that point that I decided, I'm never using that word again."
• The music video, directed by Patrick Hoelck ("Sleepwalker," "Way Away"), was shot in East London, England. The frustrated singer takes to the streets when she gets fed up with her boyfriend chatting with his female friend on the phone. Her suspicions about their so-called platonic relationship grow stronger as she spies them around town, and she even gets into a fight with the girl over a pair of red leather pants in a clothing store. But it turns out that there's an innocent explanation for their sneaking around - they were planning a surprise party for Keys, which is revealed at the end.