Songfacts®:

• Big Sean raps on this party-ready hip-hop song about learning from your mistakes and rising from the ashes of any setbacks in life.
  
  Last night took an L, but tonight I bounce back.
  Wake up every morning, by the night, I count stacks
  
  The song is dedicated to Sean's ability to rise above taking a Loss. It even has the subtitle "Take No L's", which is featured on the single's cover.
• The phrase "bounce back," meaning to get back in the game after something bad has happened to you, comes from the idiom, "bounce back harder than before."
• The song features additional vocals on the outro from Sean's label boss Kanye West (he's the one saying, "We're the real ones"). Sean originally signed with GOOD Music in 2007 after West heard him free-styling at a radio station. Since then, Yeezy has jumped on a number of the Detroit rapper's tracks including "Blessings", "One Man Can Change the World" and "All Your Fault."
• The I Decided album has an overarching story running through it of rebirth, but Big Sean doesn't want to over emphasize the message. "You don't want to overdo it. I'm not trying to sit here and preach to people," the rapper told Entertainment Weekly. "You can get [a message] across with a song like 'Bounce Back.' We've all bounced back from something before, so that fits my story perfect, but you never would have known that from hearing it by itself."
• Big Sean performed a tidied-up version of the song during his musical guest appearance on the January 21, 2017 episode of Saturday Night Live. Although this was the Detroit MC's first time as the musical guest on the show, he previously attended it in 2010 when Kanye West performed.
• Sean explained to Genius that the song is a "soundtrack for the underdog." He said:
  
  "The underdog has been through that, the underdog has took L's, bounced back, came back harder like a champion. I remember my manager told me, 'You know what happens to the underdog? It eventually turns into the big dog.' That always stuck with me, just that mentality.
  
  Overall, the hook is a team feelin'. I wanted football teams, basketball teams, people in the gym, people who lost they money in Vegas to feel like that, to feel like, Alright, we comin back stronger."
• Big Sean popped up in a 2018 commercial for Quicken Loans where Keegan-Michael Key demystifies confusing jargon. When teenager plays the song in the car, his dad asks him what it means to "take an L." Key explains it ("the rap singer took a loss, and now he's OK again"), before Sean shows up with his cameo.