Songfacts®:

• This song is a collaboration with Drake's mentor Lil Wayne. He told MTV News: "It's a pretty straightforward [song]. It's a song about being away from what you love and hoping that when you're gone, doing you, somebody out there misses you. It goes for Wayne in his situation and it goes for me in my situation, 'cause I'm on the road for I don't how long right now."
• Drake has a special relationship with New York MC Nicki Minaj, and the song contains a lyric where the rapper says he wants to put a ring on his Young Money labelmate's finger. Drake spits:
  
  I love Nicki Minaj
  I told her I'd admit it
  I hope one day we get married just to say we f---ing did it
  And girl, I'm f---ing serious
  I'm with it if you with it
  'Cause your verses turn me on and your pants are mighty fitted
  
  However the Canadian MC told MTV2's Sucker Free Countdown that the lyric should not be taken at face value. "That line on the album is just me playing with her. I'll be playing with her for years until she's ready to go, and then I'm ready," he said.
  
  Drake said in a separate interview with MTV News that his feelings for Minaj have always been genuine. "I've always really, actually, really had a crush on her, always really loved her, and she's always just looked at me as, like, her little brother," he said.
• The song's music video was directed by Anthony Mandler, who has helmed all of Drake's Thank Me Later clips. " 'Miss Me,' it was something I was so excited to do," Drake explained to MTV News. "It was something not a lot of people expected me to do, especially with Wayne being in the situation he's in. We did it as a team, held Wayne down. All the Young Money big dawgs came down - the men of Young Money - to show the muscle, to show we still in full effect. It's a great piece. It's darker than the feel of the song. It's got very much like a youth-in-revolt, rebellious feel to it. I wanted to be aggressive, man. That was my chance to flex my little 'We did it. We're still here. Young Money is still in demand.' And to deliver a message that I feel very strong about. I'm not trying to be the best in the world. I don't think that's possible. There's always somebody better than you. I just hope they miss me, man. So this is it. 'Miss Me.'"
• Mandler told MTV News that the video was a particular challenge because co-star Lil Wayne's footage was shot prior to him coming onboard before he started his jail sentence for attempted criminal possession of a weapon. "It wasn't shot the way I would have shot it," he explained. "So I had to come up with a world where I had ultimate control. I think with Drake, we're always looking for overarching themes. We're always looking for bigger themes to hang our hat on. With 'Miss Me,' what was interesting to me was not the idea of 'miss me because Wayne was going to jail.' Because it was deeper than that. It was the attainability verses the unattainability. And how stars and people who are public figures are expected to sit on a platform and be grabbed and watched and photographed and controlled.
  
  The idea for me was, what happens if it's not that clear," he added.
• This song contains the lyric, "Beat the pussy up, call me Larry Holmes."
  
  Although he was never as photogenic as others at the top of his profession, Larry Holmes was undefeated heavyweight champion of the world for seven years, and is unarguably one of the all time greats. The "Easton Assassin" retired from the ring in 2002 after winning his last four fights, and some would say the only opponent he ever lost to was Father Time.
  
  Although some boxers have earned unenviable reputations out of the ring, at the time this song was released, the former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world was still going strong including as an entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and as a performer with his band Marmalade. His disdain for "street culture" is well known; he once predicted that Mike Tyson would end up in prison, which Tyson did more than once.
  
  If the "Easton Assassin" has heard this song, Drake had better watch out for that infamous left jab! >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• Minaj told Complex Magazine how she heard about Drake expressing his love for her on this song. She explained: "He told me he said something about me on a verse, but I didn't think it would be anything like that. He let me hear it for the first time when we did Jay's show at Madison Square Garden, the day before Wayne had to go to jail—that night he let me hear it on the headphones."
• Drake shouts out to exotic dancer and model, Maliah Michel, when he raps, "Someone tell Maliah I'm on fire she should work tonight." The Toronto MC had spotted her in a Houston club called Dreams and they went on to date for a while. Michel also starred in his "Find Your Love" video.
• Soulja Boy maintained during an interview on US radio program The Breakfast Club that Drake stole his flow for this track from his 2008 hit song, "Kiss Me Thru the Phone."
  
  "That's Soulja!," he exclaimed, "That's my bar! He copied my whole... flow! Word-for-word! Bar-for-bar!"