Star67
Song Meaning

“Star67” mixes autobiography with coded street slang: Drake recounts going from making modest TV money to needing people to “put him on,” then running a crew that’s “workin’ on the phones” like a drug operation, where his associates “need the whole thing,” the profit, credit, and notoriety from his success 2 8. Threaded through the track are references to a Beretta and ammo that echo Lil Wayne’s intro 3, and a verse widely read as Drake processing his falling out with Birdman and Cash Money 4. The hustling framework also doubles as a statement that the music keeps moving no matter who’s gone, using an extended Steve Jobs/iTunes pun to say the work continues even after the “plug” is dead 7.

The meaning

The first half of “Star67” leans on bravado and coded hustler talk. Lines like “Brand new Beretta, can’t wait to let it go” tie directly into Lil Wayne’s intro about clips and ammo 3, setting a tone of armed confidence before Drake turns to score-settling. That same stretch of the verse is read as Drake chronicling a specific falling-out with Birdman, opening and closing with references to him and “expressing his feelings on them parting ways” 4, which fits Drake’s real-life split from Cash Money around this era.

The song’s central hustle metaphor comes through in “Now we in the basement, and we workin’ on the phones,” where “getting put on” is genius-annotated as slang for receiving a drug supply, meaning the phone work described is coded language for dealing 2. Drake extends this into the wordplay on “my niggas really need the whole thing,” where “my” is pronounced close to “main,” suggesting his main associates, possibly Birdman among them, want the full profit, credit, and notoriety from what he’s built rather than settling for a piece of it 8.

A separate run of bars plays on Apple’s App Store and Steve Jobs, with “used to flip apps, now that old plug murked” using “plug” as a stand-in for Jobs 7. Even though the “plug” (Jobs) is dead, the song insists “we can still get the work,” pointing listeners toward iTunes as the place the music keeps moving through no matter what 7. It’s a knowing bit of industry commentary dressed in drug-dealer language, tying his own career’s continuity to the infrastructure Jobs left behind.

On the personal side, “I do better with the rider in my system” is annotated as a play on words for alcohol, with Drake saying he writes his most honest lyrics after drinking because it lowers his inhibitions 5 6. And in Part I, the line about ignoring a text “from a centerfold” but still reading it reflects a strategy of calculated disinterest, letting a woman know he saw her message without responding, which is described as a tactic to make her doubt herself and want him more 1. Across both halves, “Star67” reads as Drake using layered slang, part come-up story, part settling of old scores, to describe the loyalty, resentment, and control that shaped his rise.

Last updated 2026-08-12