artist:  Drake

songwriters:  Aubrey Drake Graham / Anthony Paul Jefferies / Timothy E Thomas

date released:   2015

"Hotline bling", hmmm, what does it mean?   Shouldn't it be hotline "blink"—"to blink" as in the action of a red light flashing on and off on a phone indicating a voicemail left. But it is "bling", not "blink".   After doing some research on the internet, I went through a process of syntactic elimination; in other words, I examined the grammar. 

First of all, Drake uses a complicated ruse in using the term NOT as a noun.  In this case, "bling" does not mean "jewelry." "bling"="ring."  How clever of Drake to use "bling" as "ring" NOT as in jewelry, but "ring" as in the sound a phone makes.  Drake has "re-slanged" the term as a verb.  In a rapster's English, it means:  "The f****** phone is ringing." 

According to the Urban Dictionary, another meaning is simply the excitement of receiving a call on a cell phone from someone you are interested in.  It has come to describe the feeling of being flirted with a romantic pursuit.  

The Woman Behind the Hit

Drake's “Hotline Bling” sees the Canadian pop-rapper call out to an unnamed lover of his. In this lyric, Drake reminisces about phone calls he used to get from this significant other, before their eventual break-up. Although he does not specify who the song is about, fans believe it is inspired by a woman named Zineb Samir, or Nebby, who is an ex-girlfriend of Drake’s from his hometown.

You used to call me on my cell phone

Late-night when you need my love

Call me on my cell phone

Late-night when you need my love

And I know when that hotline bling

That can only mean one thing

This was not the first time Drake referenced his ex.  Before “Hotline Bling,” Drake dedicated other songs to Nebby. The first time came in 2009 on “Best I Ever Had,” the chart-topper from his third mixtape So Far Gone. The song peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100, and Drake later explained in an interview with Toronto’s 93.5 Flow that the track was dedicated to Nebby.

“It was about a wonderful woman from this city by the name of Nebby,” he said on the radio show in November 2011. “She was just the best woman that I had ever had. Period. She represented everything about this city that I loved, and we were in a great place at the time. The record just made sense, so shout out to her for giving me one of my biggest hits to date.”

When Drake put out the music video for “Hotline Bling” in October 2015 before its initial July release as a single in 2016, his dance moves throughout the visuals created a viral moment. Wearing his iconic grey turtle neck, Drake’s bent-knee choreography went viral on the internet.

During the NFL Super Bowl 50 in February 2016, Drake used scenes from the “Hotline Bling” music video for a T-Mobile commercial during the game. Particularly picking apart his lyrics about Nebby taking vacations overseas, the commercial teases how other cell phone providers aside from T-Mobile do not have great long-distance coverage.