Songfacts®:

• This track features production from Francis & the Lights frontman Francis Farewell Starlite, whose New York City based band opened up for Drake on his Campus Consciousness/Away From Home college tour.
• At a listening party held at MSR studios, Drake explained the song is a true story about a girl he grew up with and has been in love with since he was 11-years-old. However, the lady in question is not interested in being with him, as she doesn't like the spotlight. "That always cut away at me," he said.
• After he signed on to tour with Drake, Starlite was asked by the Young Money MC's people if he had any music available. The New Yorker told MTV News that he struggled to come up with a suitable number, before deciding to give up a track he was saving for himself. Said Starlite: "My immediate reaction was to go into the studio with [my producer], who I work with on most of my things, and we tried to make beats. And we sent one and heard nothing; we sent another and heard nothing. And I sort of realized: It has to be deeper than that. [For] Drake and his people, it has to be good above all, before it's any genre or anything. So I had a song that I had been working on for a while that I knew was good. I knew it was something special. And I made the decision to give it to him and let it go in that way. So I tracked ['Karaoke'] in one night in the middle of [recording] my record. I sent it to them, and I heard back in, like, three minutes," he laughed.
  Starlite added that Drake didn't alter the music much, but admitted the Canadian star's vocals enhanced the song. "He made it better, unquestionably, from what I had," the singer said. "And that's a good feeling. He made it very personal, but making some very subtle changes and doing his thing on it, obviously, with the verses. He actually made it make sense in a way that didn't make sense to me before."