I'm Upset

Album: Scorpion (2018)
Charted: 37 7
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Songfacts®:

  • Drake is not a happy MC - he's angry at gold diggers who are after his money and frustrated at being disrespected by his peers. During the chorus, he claims there's a bounty on his head:

    I'm upset
    Fifty thousand on my head, it's disrespect
    So offended that I had to double check
    I'ma always take the money over sex
    That's why they need me out the way
    What you expect?


    Drake is constantly being targeted by other rappers looking for publicity by beefing him in their rhymes. The "low" amount of the bounty, a disrespectful $50,000, is presumably a metaphor for the poor quality of their verses.
  • Drake kicks off his second verse by warning haters who are after his throne that he's not playing games.

    You tryna check?
    This is real life, niggas think we playin' chess
    So what's next?


    His enemies need to remember this is real life and the OVO leader means business.

    Drake previously referenced irrelevant rappers who want to play games like chess on the Nothing Was The Same track "Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2" when he rapped:

    Took a while, got the jokers out of the deck now
    I'm holdin' all the cards and niggas wanna play chess now
  • The temperamental song features moody production by Oogie Mane. This represents the Philadelphia-based producer's first placement on a Drake track - he was previously best known for supplying the instrumentation for MATT OX's breakout hit "Overwhelming" and "Of Course (Drippin' & Swaggin')" from Lil Uzi Vert's 2018 record, Lil Uzi Vert Vs. The World 2.

    Oogie Mane explained to The Fader that OB O'Brien, a longtime member of Drake's inner circle, reached out to him to find instrumentals for the Toronto MC. The producer, unsure if the request was fake, sent over a pack of old beats he had made in 2015. It was only when Drake expressed his enthusiasm for the soundscape that became "I'm Upset" that he knew the 6 God was genuinely interested. However, because Oogie had lost the stems for the track he had to entirely remake it from scratch.
  • The song made its debut on the airwaves while Drake was in the middle of an exchange of diss tracks with Pusha-T. A few days after the OVO rapper dropped the song, King Push released the Drizzy-beefing "The Story of Adidon." Pusha's cut may shed some light on some of Drake's some of bitter rhymes during "I'm Upset."

    Every month, she don't even love me, she just puttin' on a front
    She gon' try and settle outta court and make a run
    Then gon' ask me how I'm doin'?


    During "The Story of Adidon," Pusha talks about French model and porn actress Sophie Brussaux, who claims that she gave birth to Drake's baby – a boy named Adonis. According to TMZ, Brussaux has already hired a big New York City lawyer, Raoul Felder, to get the paternity/child support ball rolling.
  • The song's music video shows Drake reuniting with the entire cast of the teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation, which ran for 14 years from 2001. Aubrey "Drake" Graham co-starred in it for seven years from the age of 15 as basketball star Jimmy Brooks. As well as appearances by Degrassi cast members, there are cameo appearances from Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes reprising their Jay and Silent Bob characters from Smith's View Askewniverse film series.
  • Most of the ex-Degrassi students showed up to the reunion. However Sean Cameron, who was played by actor Daniel Clark, didn't get an invite and he only found out about the video after it came out. According to an interview with TMZ, he is clueless why nobody reached out to him. Not surprisingly he is... upset.

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