Songfacts®:

• "Hate to Say" finds Tory Lanez addressing his numerous beefs over the years with Travis Scott, Drake, Pi'erreBourne, and Eric Bellinger, and the life he's living right now. He described the track as: "4:30 seconds of me laying everything on the table."
• Lanez recalls during the cut his temporary falling out with Travis Scott.
  
  Me and Travis Scott almost fought at the Mala Luna
  We both agreed shortly after that it was music
  We possibly could be doin' that's bigger than tryna ruin it
  So my apologies, nigga, just forgive me for doin' it
  
  He explained to Genius: "I'm not gonna go too far into it, but pretty much we had a disagreement over something. And, at one point, we was at the same festival, and we was about to scrap over some s--t. Some s--t happened, and I think I egged on the fight a little too much, that's about it. So I was just saying my apologies for egging on the fight. 'Cause at the end of the day, it's not like we ended up scrapping. We sat there, and we talked about what you felt, and whatever I felt, and we was like, 'Yo, we should be working with each other.'"
• Lanez linked up with producers Christian Lou, Bobby Made The Beat, and Play Picasso for the song. He recalled: "Christian Lou sent the beat over to me. I was already missin' this kinda thing on the album, so, I was just like, 'Alright, I'm gonna take this moment to find out how I feel about this situation.'"
• The producers used a vocal sample from One Direction's 2013 track "You & I" throughout the song. Lanez explained the surprising choice to borrow from:
  
  "It's weird, right? 'Cause you would never expect these songs to come out of that. But yeah, we had to clear it with One Direction, so that's a Zane sample. Me and Christian Lou been working together for years. So I think when he heard it, he just was like, "Nah, this is for Tory. I have to get this to Tory."