Songfacts®:

• Minaj wrote the lyric to this song about her ex-boyfriend Safaree Samuels. The couple had an 11-year relationship, and according to Minaj he wanted to get married, but she wanted to hold off.
  
  Both Minaj and Samuels blame her rise to fame as a catalyst for their split, but for different reasons: Samuels says she started treating him like an employee, and Minaj says he changed when she became so successful.
  
  "This business changed people that I really loved, and it's scary," Minaj said. "They start worshiping material things and forget about good, old-fashioned things like love and trust."
  
  In the song, Minaj acknowledges she is partly to blame for it not working out: "I'm just abusive by nature, not cause I hate ya."
• This song features a vocal contribution by Jessie Ware. It marks the first time the Trinidadian rapper and British singer have teamed up.
• This shares its title with a 1992 movie and also its theme song, which was a hit for Boy George.
• The production duo Pop & Oak sent Minaj the song's demo with Jessie Ware singing. The rapper asked Beyoncé to sing on it but they decided on "Feeling Myself" instead. "There was something so haunting about Jessie Ware's voice," Minaj said. "It had both (ex-boyfriend) Safaree and I in a trance for days."
• Minaj didn't anticipate writing deeply personal tracks like this one when she set to work on The Pinkprint, but the album ended up being "an emotional roller coaster" for the singer, chronicling her real life ups and downs. "Brokenness leads to art sometimes, and I was really really broken writing this," she said of "The Crying Game."