Songfacts®:

• Following Drake's 2017 playlist More Life, the Toronto MC surprised his fans on January 19, 2018 by dropping two songs from his Scary Hours EP. The two tracks were "God's Plan" and "Diplomatic Immunity." With its bouncy flow, this orchestral melodic track is the more commercial of the two releases.
• The uptempo song finds Drake reflecting on his future.
  
  God's plan, God's plan
  I hold back, sometimes I won't, yuh
  I feel good, sometimes I don't, ay, don't
  
  Despite the fact that his haters want him to fail, and he even sometimes doubts himself, the Jewish Toronto MC knows God has a plan for his life.
• The bouncy beat was supplied by:
  
  Drake's main musical partner as a producer and engineer, Noah "40" Shebib.
  
  Former Taylor Gang producer Ron LaTour, better known as Cardo, who has supplied the beats on numerous albums and singles including Schoolboy Q's "THat Part," Travis Scott's "Goosebumps" and Kendrick Lamar's "GOD."
  
  Devon Jackson, better known as Yung Exclusive, is a producer best known for his work with Cardo, with whom he co-produced "THat Part," "Goosebumps" and "God."
  
  Toronto producer Matthew Jehu Samuels professionally known as Boi-1da, who has worked on hit songs for artists such as Big Sean ("Blessings"), Eminem ("Not Afraid"), Rihanna ("Work") and Kendrick Lamar ("The Blacker the Berry"). As an in-house producer for Drake's OVO Sound label, he has supplied the beats for such cuts as "Summer Sixteen" and "Know Yourself."
• The song amassed 4,326,679 streams on Spotify in the US on January 22, 2018 the highest total of plays in 24 hours in the streaming platform's history. The record was previously held by Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do."
• This was Drake's third UK #1 following his Rihanna duet "What's My Name?" and 2016 smash "One Dance."
• Boi-1da explained his contribution to Billboard:
  
  "It was a half-finished record that Drake had. He came to me and needed me to put a bounce to it to rock a certain way. So I ended up adding some drums to the record. It came out well. I vibed with it and did what needed to be done. It came out as an amazing record."
• During the first two weeks of February 2018, there were several reports of Drake's philanthropy throughout Miami. They included spending an estimated $50,000 paying for groceries for shoppers at the Sabor Tropical Supermarket and surprising student Destiny James by giving her a $50,000 check towards her University of Miami tuition. When this song's music video was released on February 16, 2018, it became clear what was happening. The Karena Evans shot clip opens with the text: "The budget for this video was $996,631.90. We gave it all away. Don't tell the label." We then see the OVO leader giving away almost $1 million to various good causes with each kind act being documented on camera.
• "God's Plan" had multiple weeks at the summit of Billboard's Hot 100 chart. When it reached its 10th week at peak position, Drake became the first ever lead solo male with two 10-week Billboard Hot 100 #1s, having previously achieved the feat with "One Dance."
• This won for Best Rap Song at the Grammy Awards in 2019. Drake accepted the award, but like Childish Gambino and Kendrick Lamar, turned down an offer to perform, illuminating a fissure between the Grammy establishment and the hip-hop community. Before his speech got cut off, he said, "This is a business where sometimes it’s up to a bunch of people that might not understand what a mixed-race kid from Canada has to say."
• Drake originally came up with first verse and hook in September 2017 after Cardo had sent him the instrumental. Speaking during a Rap Radar podcast interview, the Canadian rapper said it was "recorded on a whim in my condo and I thought nothing of it."
  
  Drake sent the demo to Trippie Redd as a possible track for his album but the Ohio rapper was busy doing his own thing. When the half-finished song leaked, it forced Drake's hand to finish the track and release it himself. "We had to rush and turn around because I was worried that another artist was gonna get the version and just start laying random verses on it," he explained.
  
  "We were rushing, rushing, rushing to try to turn it around in the next two days," Drake continued. "I was just like, 'Yo, I have to do a second verse. It has to be hard.'"
  
  Drake concluded that the song's success was indeed "God's plan." "I never could've told you a week before that 'God's Plan' was my single and it was gonna be the biggest song of my career," he said. "I never would've known that. My hand just got forced. I do feel as though I can put in the maximum amount of effort, I can use all my heart and my soul in my writing. But at the end of the day, I am being guided by some other power. I don't know what it is, but somebody likes me somewhere. And that's just the facts. A lot of this is organic, it's not that calculated."