Songfacts®:

• Drake drops the needle on his For All The Dogs album with this track where he dives headfirst into his past loves. This "pretty but ghetto" city girl is messing with his head and tugging at his heartstrings. He's straight-up fiending for those early days of their love story, lost in the fantasy of their fire romance.
• Virginia Beach is a resort city located on the southeastern coast of Virginia. It's a popular tourist destination known for its scenic beauty, including sandy beaches, lush forests, and Chesapeake Bay views.
  
  Virginia Beach is also home to a significant population of low-income residents. According to the US Census Bureau, 7.8% of Virginia Beach residents live below the poverty line.
  
  Here, Drake compares his ex to Virginia Beach, Virginia. He paints a portrait of a woman with both soft and tough qualities similar to the city's contrasting realities.
• There are two possible explanations why Drake titled this song after Virginia Beach.
  
  1) Drake rocked the stage at Virginia Beach during his 2014 tour with Lil Wayne. As For All The Dogs harks back to musical past, "Virginia Beach"' becomes a full-circle moment in Drake's career - a realization that past experiences have slowly faded into the background.
  
  2) Virginia Beach is the hometown of Drake's nemesis, Pusha T. The pair have long-standing beef dating back to 2012 when King Push released a song titled "Exodus 23:1" on which he publicly dissed the Toronto MC over Dreezy's own beat.
• Drake had an on-again, off-again relationship with Rihanna for several years. In 2016, Drake famously confessed his love for the Bajan star at the MTV Video Music Awards, but the couple broke up soon after. Here Drake seems to address his onetime romantic partner.
  
  Drawin' conclusions like you got a Parsons degree or somethin'
  I coulda treated you better, that's crazy
  
  New York City's Parsons School of Design is one of America's oldest and most esteemed design and art schools. In 2017, Rihanna accepted an honorary Parsons degree.
• "Virginia Beach" starts and ends with the same vocal sample taken from Frank Ocean's unreleased track, "Wiseman." Ocean wrote the song in 2012 for the Django Unchained movie but it was excluded from the soundtrack. He later posted the song on his Tumblr stating that "Django was ill without it." In April 2023, Ocean performed a punk rock version of "Wiseman" at Coachella.
• Drake's right-hand man Noah "40" Shebib created the soft, skittering production with Harley Arsenault ("TSU," "N 2 Deep"). 40 and Arsenault also played the keys and drums.