Second single off of 8701, a Billboard Hot 100 chart topping R&B ballad.

Lyrically, the song’s inspired by a true story. Jermaine Dupri (co-writer and co-producer of the song) and Usher were in the studio trying to record some music for the album, but Usher was continually distracted by a girl he had brought into the studio. Following an argument, the girl left. A while later, they started talking on the phone, which prompted Dupri to kick Usher out of the studio telling him, “We’re going to do this [session] later on. You got it completely too bad right now. You got it bad.” This ignited the inspiration for the song, and once Usher had left, Dupri started writing its lyrics, with the notion that it was going to be a big hit. Once Usher had returned to the studio, Dupri shared the story of the song with him, and the rest is history…

Jermaine Dupri told Complex:

“I learned from ‘Nice & Slow’ that people wanted that. ‘Nice & Slow’ was a big record, but we only made one. We went into that album saying, we got to make another ‘Nice & Slow.’ What I did with ‘U Got It Bad’ was take it to the next level, make another version of that. ‘U Got It Bad’ was basically just another version of ‘Nice & Slow’ with me trying to repeat and just make a better version.”