Songfacts®:

• The origins of this song lay in an old sample from Kanye West's tapes that Pusha and 'Ye found lying around. When they found it, Pusha's first idea was to recruit fellow American rapper Future to lend a vocal assist. "I came and collaborated with 'Ye when we started making music for the album and we were just discussing who was hot and what was going on right now," Pusha stated to The Boombox. "I told him that I liked Future. I just came from home, there were seven songs in the club that Future was being played on. I felt out of wack cause these things were huge. I wasn't familiar with all of his records."
  
  "I think I hear him a little bit differently," the Virginia native added regarding Future. "There's something eerie about [his voice]. 'Ye made this beat -- it was pain, it was dark. I was like, 'With this, we should see what [Future] comes up with.' It was purely an effort to juxtapose how people usually hear him and try to pull out what we wanted from him."
• This was released as the first single from Pusha T's debut album, My Name Is My Name. The title of the LP is the jailhouse declaration of one of the characters in the hit crime TV show The Wire. Pusha explained to Hip Hop Since 1987: "Basically, I tried to pick a title that embodied who I am as an artist. I wanted people to understand like Pusha is everything that I really, really am."
  
  "Actually, there is a line in 'Pain' where I say 'My name is my name', that line comes from Marlo Stanfield from the series The Wire. It was one of the more prominent catch phrases that he said at the end of that series. He was basically saying, I am who I am, I stand on my name I live this. I really felt that embodied my presence in the rap game."
• This song finds Pusha rapping about a drug dealer whose numbness to the effects of his trade on society has left him without any conscience. "I don't ever feel pain, cuz I done felt too much pain," croons Future on the hook.
• This samples "My Name is Anthony Gonsalves," a popular comic song from the 1977 Bollywood film Amar Akbar Anthony.