Songfacts®:

• This song finds Post Malone rapping woozy, lovelorn rhymes over Frank Dukes and Vinylz's airy, island-kissed production. Justin Bieber croons a call-and-response hook with the "White Iverson" rapper in which they wonder if their love is meant to be. Malone first worked with the Canadian star when he opened for him on his Purpose World Tour.
• "Deja vu" (from French "already seen") is a sensation of feeling like you've experienced a certain situation or event before. Other artists that have recorded songs about the phenomenon include John Fogerty, Beyonce, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Dionne Warwick, Eminem and Twenty88.
• Engineer Louis Bell recalled the day in January 2016 when Justin Bieber visited Post Malone in the studio.
  
  "We were halfway through (Stoney) and ended up renting a house," he explained to Billboard. "Post started bringing me in to pull together every song he was working on, so on the first day Justin came in and we played him a track that (fellow producer) Frank Dukes had done."
  
  Bieber immediately jumped on Dukes' beat and he and Malone concocted what would become "Deja Vu." Bell recalled: "He ended up freestyling the whole song in the booth, and him and Post went back and forth with ideas. The whole time I'm engineering and recording it, which kept me on my toes."