Songfacts®:

• This ode to the love for Drake and his musical family features Toronto-based R&B singer Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. the Weeknd. Drake has helped public awareness for The Weeknd, after he quoted a line from the track "Wicked Games" via Twitter and posted a link to the artist's music on his blog. A few months later the Canadian MC supplied guest vocals to "The Zone," a track from The Weeknd's second mixtape, Thursday. Drake told Billboard magazine how his Toronto homie inspired Take Care. "Not only did he inspire me to get out there and try and sing better onstage," he said, "but he inspired me just writing-wise, music-wise, just to better my product. To hear someone else with an incredible body of work is very rare, so it's very inspiring."
• Noah "40" Shebib, who co-produced the track, told MTV News: "'Crew Love' is just a moment for Drake as far at the content of the record and what was going on around him in life and his people and his team. That was just an important record for him to make, and Weeknd was someone he wanted to include on that."
• The Weeknd told Complex magazine that this was originally his song. "I had a hook and I had a second verse," he said. "And Drake heard it and he was like, 'F--k, man.'
  'There's a second verse?'
  'Yeah, there was a second verse on it.'
  'You've got to play that for me!'"
  
  The Weeknd added that he hated his second verse. "That was a complete freestyle as well," he said. "I'm glad Drake placed his vocals on it. That song was so special to him. I didn't hear that verse until maybe four or five months after I gave it to him."