Songfacts®:

• Drake opens his Nothing Was the Same album with this lengthy, six minute and six second song where he boasts about how long the track is, his ability to change up his flows and the recognition that he can subvert the mainstream Hip-Hop form and still get radio play:
  
  "This is nothin' for the radio, but they'll still play it though
  Cause it's that new Drizzy Drake, that's just the way it go."
  
  Drake also references the fact that the song is made up of three verses, an outro and no hook. "Heavy airplay all day with no chorus," he brags.
• Tom Ford Tuscan Leather is an expensive cologne. Drake explained the concept behind the song title to GQ magazine as, "Tom Ford fragrance that some say smells like a brick of cocaine."
• Drake and Young Money label mate Nicki Minaj had a special connection in the past, even getting married on one track. However, Drizzy alludes here to a strained relationship with the Queens MC:
  
  "Not even talkin' to Nicki, communication is breakin'
  I dropped the ball on some personal s--t, I need to embrace it."
  
  Drake admitted to MTV News that he was to blame for the breakdown of their friendship, but they subsequently reconciled after he'd penned the song. "That line in Tuscan Leather isn't exactly where I am in my life right now but like a year ago, eight months, seven months ago, it was how I felt. I'd done something wrong and I wasn't speaking to her," said the Toronto MC.
  
  "I think the dialogue actually between us was already opened up," he added. "I had already solved that issue. I wrote that a while ago and I kinda felt guilty changing it."
  
  Drake stood by his choice to include the lyric on Nothing Was The Same, despite the pair being back on speaking terms. "It was a sentiment that I had when I started this album and felt like that's how it should be," he explained. "The album should start one place and end in another."
• The song ends with a Curtis Mayfield quote from the end of a 1987 concert in Montreaux where the soul legend talks about, "having the same fears, shedding similar tears, and of course dying in so many years, it don't mean that we can't have a good life."
• This song samples the Whitney Houston tune "I Have Nothing" from The Bodyguard soundtrack. Speaking with Rolling Stone, producer Noah "40" Shebib explained. "It's a three-staged record - one sample flipped three different ways, with a verse over each beat."
• Drake gives a shout out to Cappadonna, a quasi-member of the Wu-Tang Clan on this song. It is one of number of references to the New York crew on Nothing Was The Same. According to Clan member U-God, the pair have a bit of history. "Cappadonna did a song with Drake before y'all even knew Drake. That's why [Drake] respects certain dudes. Cap still got the song, he got the record," U-God told MTV News. "He still got it in the stash."
• Drake explained the creation of the song to Vibe magazine: "When we were in Atlanta I told 40, 'Man, just give me some s--- that Dipset would rap on," he said. "He gave me the beat for the first part of 'Tuscan Leather."' Then Boi-1da sent us some drums and we flipped it, then flipped the end part again. We had this running joke; we'd listen to the song and be like 'Oh, the album is done. The song was such a journey.'"