Conan released a teaser of “Checkmate” on his YouTube channel on June 23. The song was released on Wednesday, June 26, 2019 on various streaming platforms and with a lyric video on his Youtube Channel.

A Chess metaphor is put to use to describe the relationship between Conan and the one he was seeing. The “significant other” treated Conan as one of his pawns, but what they didn’t know is that he’s actually the King.