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November 18th (song)

2009 song by Drake

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 16, 2025
Entity authorityQ125503906 ↗
Source-derived summary

"November 18th" is a song by Canadian rapper and singer Drake from his third mixtape So Far Gone (2009). The song contains posthumous production credits from DJ Screw, and was released on the 13th of February, as the fifth track to the breakout mixtape.

The song only appeared on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart upon release, peaking at number fifty-eight in 2009. It eventually topped the Trending 140 chart in 2014, as a result of Twitter users sharing their enthusiasm for the track on the same day as the song's title.

Background

The name of the song refers to the day that Drake first met Lil Wayne in Houston, Texas. He explained in an interview with Complex, "And then coincidentally, when I broke up with that girl, a week later I went to Houston and met Lil Wayne and that's where 'November 18th' comes from".

Composition

The beat samples DJ Screw's chopped-and-screwed version of Kris Kross' "Da Streets Ain't Right", which in turn samples The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Warning". The song also contains an interpolation of "Pimp Tha Pen" by DJ Screw and Lil' Keke. Lil' Keke later stated that Drake paid him for the use of the lyric interpolation in an interview with Geto Boys Reloaded.

Critical reception

In a review of So Far Gone, Billboard's Scott Glaysher ranked "November 18th" as the third-best song off the mixtape, behind Best I Ever Had.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “November 18th (song)” is 2009 song by Drake. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through November, 18th and song, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2009, 2014—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, November, 18th and song is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2009 song by Drake” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q125503906. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009 and 2014.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “November 18th (song)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow November 18th (song) primary sources, November 18th (song) archive and November research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “November 18th (song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.