Songfacts®:

• "Your Love" was Nicki Minaj's first solo hit, going to #1 on the Rap chart and reaching #14 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 2010. She was known for her collaborations at this point, having teamed with Trey Songs on "Bottoms Up" and with Ludacris on "My Chick Bad."
  
  Minaj's first solo single was "Massive Attack," which stiffed. "Your Love" was her second, and when it hit, it proved she could hold up on her own. A few months later it was included on her first album, Pink Friday.
• The song was produced by "Oak" Felder and "Pop" Wansel. They incorporated the beat from Annie Lennox's "No More I Love You's" and added additional bass and drum-loops. After Lennox wouldn't clear the sample, Oak and his colleague Pop Wansel had to come up with an alternative and they ended up re-creating themselves. So convincing was the pair's new version that Lennox's lawyers continued to think it still incorporated the sample. "Annie Lennox thought she was hearing herself, which was fly as hell," said Pop to MTV News.
• The demo for "Your Love" was originally released on the Barbie World mixtape in January 2010 with different lyrics in the pre-chorus and with a faster sound. The song references Superman, Bruce Willis in Die Hard, and Adam and Eve.
• Minaj saw this song as a throwaway, which she planned to sit on. It only got released after the tune was stolen and leaked to the Web. "I was not planning on putting the song out at all," she told MTV News. "But then I heard it one day, somebody told me it was online. And I was like, 'No way, no way in the world that song is out.' I went and listened to it and was really upset. It wasn't mixed, it wasn't finished, it wasn't anything - I wasn't gonna use it at all. But then radio started playing it."
• The song's music video was directed by Lil X and co-stars actor Michael Jai White as Minaj's martial arts instructor and love interest. "We wanted to have geisha themes, samurai themes, stuff like that," The Young Money MC told MTV News. "I wanted to tell a love story. It's just kinda liking a guy, where he's not really for you to like - the forbidden fruit - and me and this other girl happen to like him and we go to war."
• At the end of the song's music video, Minaj's character comes out on the losing end during a sword fight and receives a fatal blow to the gut. The MC explained to MTV News why she wanted to die at the end of the clip: "I just felt like that was the most emotional and truthful storyline," she explained. "I felt like mostly everyone would normally make themselves win in the end. I wanted to show that the only way I could be beat is if you cheat. If you cheat! If you play fair and square, I'm gonna win. It's my little way of looking at it. Also, I felt it was almost heart-wrenching to see it. I made myself this nice girl in the video and you bond with the character, you know what I mean? You know what I mean. You see her die. I wanted people to talk about it in the end. 'Why did she make that decision?' I wanted them to cry."
• This topped the Billboard rap charts, the first time a female artist led the tally unaccompanied since Lil Kim did so in 2003.
• This was the first song by a lead female artist to top Billboard's Rap chart since Lil' Kim led with "Magic Stick," featuring 50 Cent, in June and July 2003. The previous instance of a female artist unaccompanied by any other act topping Rap Songs was "Work It" by Missy Elliot, which spent 12 weeks at #1 beginning November 2, 2002.
• This was the first Hot 100 Top 40 single achieved by "Oak" Felder and "Pop" Wansel. It launched the production pair to international acclaim and they went on to helm a string of hit tunes including Big Sean's "Marvin & Chardonnay," Alessia Cara's "Here" and Usher's "Good Kisser." Speaking with Songwriter Universe, Felder recalled how the track rose up the charts.
  
  "Pop had a previous, existing relationship with Nicki before she was famous. Nicki happened to hear 'Your Love,' and she was like, 'Oh my God, I love this record and I'm gonna sing it.' And so she got on it, and she sang the hook and recorded the record.
  
  But at first, the record was put off to the side and wasn't a single. But somehow the record leaked, and the song went to #47 on the Hot 100 chart without a push. And then the label realized it might be a hit, so they started pushing the song, and lo and behold, it became a #1 song. So that's how that happened."
• The Pink Friday album ascended to #1 on the Billboard 200 in its 11th week on the chart. It was the longest ascent to pole position since the late Ray Charles' Genius Loves Company rose to the summit in its 25th week of release following its Album of the Year Grammy win in 2005.
• Along with "Anaconda" and "Starships," "Your Love" is one of Nicki Minaj's hits that she has since disavowed. "I like the video but I hate the song," she said at a conference in 2020.