Behind Barz

Album: Top Boy (A Selection of Music Inspired by the Series) (2018)
Charted: 49 75
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Songfacts®:

  • Drake dropped this freestyle on July 7, 2018 while in London. He performed the tune on the British rap platform Link Up TV during which he made a number of allusions to UK culture. They include:

    Referencing an affluent area of London ("we got ties in West End too").

    Using the name of a traditional English drink in a reference to a piece of sensitive information he knows about ("Got all the tea and I'm hottin' it up. I need a shade mansion, a room's not enough.").

    Shouting out UK grime rapper Giggs, who appeared on the More Life tracks "KMT" and "No Long Talk."
  • Drake criticizes in the second verse those rappers (Kanye, cough) who appear to be more focused on fashion than music.

    They wanna link when they got no chunes
    They too worried about sellin' out shoes
    I don't give a f--- about jeans or crep
    Or going to Milan or going to the Met


    Some have interpreted this as a jab at Kanye West's Yeezy line. Though the Chicago rapper wasn't present at the 2018 Met Gala, he was spotted in Milan in late 2017.
  • The freestyle was included on the soundtrack to season three of the Drake executive-produced Top Boy. A big fan of the London crime drama, Drake played an integral role in reviving Top Boy six years after the previous series and securing a Netflix deal for the show.

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