Songfacts®:

• This is a song by American rapper B.o.B, from his second studio album, Strange Clouds. The Dr. Luke and Cirkut produced track finds the American rapper identifying with underdogs, as he rhymes about battling pain and hardships in life. It was leaked on April 11, 2012.
• That's Country-Pop singer-songwriter Taylor Swift's voice on the hook. The pair first performed together when B.o.B. made a surprise appearance at Swift's 2011 show at the Dallas Cowboys' stadium. The rapper sang his hit, "Airplanes," with Swift taking over chorus duties from Paramore's Hayley Williams.
• It was Swift who came up with the idea for the collaboration after she visited B.o.B's Grand Hustle record label HQ. The rapper explained that, "she came to Atlanta and she hit up Grand Hustle. I wasn't there. Tip was there and I eventually linked with her in Dallas and the rest is history."
• Other Swift collaborations with the Hip-Hop fraternity include her hook up with T-Pain at the 2009 CMT Awards. It involved her making fun of her squeaky-clean image in the song "Thug Life," when she rapped such lyrics as, "You can find me making cookies at night. You out clubbing? I just made caramel delights." Two years later, the superstar recruited T.I., Nicki Minaj and Flo Rida to assist her during the Speak Now Tour.
• The collaboration finds B.o.B. rapping the N-word, making it the first Swift recording that featured a profane term.
• B.o.B told The Boombox that his collaboration with the Country-Pop songstress began with him getting a text message from someone claiming to be Taylor Swift. "I was like, 'This isn't Taylor Swift,' " he recalled. "She invited me to her show, to bring me out to her show to do 'Airplanes.' Lucky for me I'm a really trusting person so I moved forward. Usually if someone's like, 'This is Tupac,' you're gonna be like 'Whatever' [laughs].
• B.o.B recounted the story of the song to The Boombox: "I wasn't in Atlanta at the time so she arranged for me to come to Dallas. I remember I had a show in Alabama and they let me use her tour bus to come to her show in Dallas. When I played her ['Both of Us'] even before the first verse even dropped, she was onboard. She was like, 'I love it already.' I was like 'She'd be perfect for it.' She recorded her vocals in L.A. I recorded my vocals in Atlanta. [When I first heard the song with both our parts] it instantly felt magical. Actually I had to re-sing some of my parts so they could really blend with her [vocals]. I rewrote one of my verses as well. It started as a blueprint and it really continued to grow into something tremendous."