Songfacts®:

• Suzanne Vega has seen her work sampled by rap artists many times. This song finds taking her own first stab at sampling. While recording this track, the New Yorker was reminded of the rhythms in 50 Cent's "Candy Shop," and her producer, former David Bowie musical director Gerry Leonard, suggested sampling it. "I thought it was as funny idea, and it's not as crazy as it sounds," she told Rolling Stone. "You almost wouldn't know it's there."
• The song also throws in a reference to another rapper, Macklemore. "I was so crazy about 'Thrift Shop' when it came out," Vega told Rolling Stone. "I couldn't stop listening to it and singing it. I love that idea that someone would do a rap song about thrift shops. People of my generation, we always got clothes from there, and he made it this radical thing and this statement. I found it really invigorating."
• Among the track's admirers is a certain rapper. "I have heard from 50 Cent," Vega told Billboard magazine. "He said he was a big fan. We made a little [financial] deal; he was extremely reasonable, really great. I can't praise him enough."
• Vega told Billboard magazine the roots of her music and Hip-Hop are more similar than one would imagine. "I think that there's an honesty to rap and folk music [lyrically]," she said, "a kind of outsider status."