Songfacts®:

• One of the more poetic aspects of music is its ability to turn the mundane into the profound. Take, for example, "Moth Balls," a track from PartyNextDoor and Drake's joint album, Some Sexy Songs 4 U.
  
  Mothballs, as any grandmother with a closet will tell you, are those oddly scented little spheres designed to keep clothes from being eaten by moths. They also, incidentally, smell so distinctively awful that you could be forgiven for wondering if they repel people as much as they do insects. But in this song, the mothball is a metaphor for the emotional baggage that clings to Drake like the persistent, inescapable scent of naphthalene on a wool sweater.
• I just hoped that someday, someone would love me
  
  Drake hints at a rather melancholic truth: he's still waiting for someone to love him. This ties directly into another track on the album, "Somebody Loves Me," where Drake practically declares that he doesn't know what it feels like for someone to truly love him.
• Drake has spent the better part of his career composing melancholy odes to ex-girlfriends, fleeting connections, and existential crises. In "Moth Balls," he continues this tradition, lamenting that no matter how many times he tries to move forward, the past just won't let him go. Or, in his words:
  
  Mothballs, I can't get the smell out my clothes
• Drake is, and always has been, the poet laureate of personal baggage. Consider:
  
  2010 "Find Your Love": Wherein Drake admits he's doomed to be hurt but is willing to take the risk anyway.
  
  2011 "Marvin's Room": A phone call to an ex-girlfriend he's absolutely not over.
  
  2011 "Doing It Wrong": A ballad about the painful necessity of breakups and how he's just not very good at them.
  
  2018 "Jaded": In which Drake details how a past heartbreak left him emotionally unavailable.
  
  In short, if anyone was going to compare heartache to the stubborn stench of mothballs, it was going to be Drake.
• PartyNextDoor, per usual, handles the sensual side of things. His chorus is about physical attraction, intimacy, and the kind of moments that Drake will later write songs about regretting. While Drake is stuck in the past; PND is very much in the present.
• DJ Lewis, Aiona, O Lil Angel, Prep Bijan, Eli Brown and PartyNextDoor produced the track. They crafted a moody, atmospheric sound that suits Drake's introspection and PND's sultry delivery.
  
  It's the only track on Some Sexy Songs 4 U that PND co-produced, making it a bit of an outlier. DJ Lewis, O Lil Angel, and Prep Bijan worked on multiple songs across the album, while Eli Brown and Prep Bijan also contributed to PartyNextDoor's 2024 album PartyNextDoor 4.