Summer Sixteen

Album: single release only (2016)
Charted: 23 6
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Songfacts®:

  • Drake debuted this diss single on his Apple Beats 1 OVO Sound Radio program on January 30, 2016. The blistering track features Drizzy taking shots at his nemesis Meek Mill over a menacing beat. The pair's beef dates back July 2015 to when Meek Mill claimed that a ghost writer writes Drake's lyrics.
  • Looking for revenge
    All summer sixteen
    All summer sixteen
    Playing dirty not clean
    Out in front of Four Seasons


    When Meek Mill came to Toronto as part of the Pinkprint Tour, he stayed at the Four Seasons.

    I let the diss record drop, you was staying right below me, n---a
    We must have played it a hundred times, you was going to bed
    Why would I put on a vest I expect you to aim for the head?


    Drake checked into the same hotel and played his diss track "Back to Back" on repeat in a room directly above him. just to tease Mill.
  • Just 15 minutes after the song's premiere, Meek Mill fired back with "War Pain." The Philly rapper's track addresses several of Drake's lines directly, including both depicting a scenario in which the two are staying at the same hotel in Toronto. Mill later claimed insider knowledge enabled him to mimic Drake's lyrics stating in an Instagram post that the ghost writer revealed Drake's rhymes to him.
  • The beat at the start of the second verse, as Drake dishes out some aggressive bars at up and coming Toronto artists like Tory Lanez:

    All you boys in the new Toronto want to be me a little
    All your ex's know I like my O's with a V in the middle
    You would love it if I went away or didn't say nothing else
    How am I keeping it real by keeping this s--t to myself?


    Drake has a flickering beef with Tory Lanez whose subliminals aimed at the OVO founder include a mixtape titled The New Toronto.
  • Drake has a playful poke at Kanye West involving the size of his pool when he raps:

    Now I got a house in LA.
    Now I got a bigger pool than Ye
    And look man, Ye's pool is nice.
    Mine's just big is what I'm saying
    .

    Drake's friend DJ Khaled proclaims at the end of the song, "They don’t want you to have a bigger pool than Kanye West," a phrase he previously shared with his followers as a statement that a person can overcome any limit society places on them.

    Drake may boast that he has a bigger pool than Kanye West, but Ye revealed on Big Boy's West Coast radio show that he in fact has three swimming pools.

    Drake told Zane Lowe about his claim to have a bigger pool than Yeezy. "[Kanye] lives up the block [in LA]... I take pride in being Kanye West's neighbour. He has a phenomenal pool. His pool's gotta be like half a football field ... Mine was designed to out-do Hugh Hefner's pool. I'm willing to sell it for $100 million."
  • Frequent Drake collaborators Noah "40" Shebib and Boi-1da supplied the production. Their beat borrows from the outro of "The Question Is" by gospel group The Winans. It also contains a slowed down sample from Brian Bennett’s 1975 song, "Glass Tubes," which first appears at 1:53.
  • Drake explained the use of The Winans sample during a chat with Canadian celebrity interviewer Nardwuar "Emotionally, I would listen to that sample on loop," he said. "Me and 40 have had that sample for a really long time, just figuring out where to place it because the music these guys make and that particular sample means a lot to me."

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