Trivia

• In “Not Alike,” Eminem continues taking aim at “mumble rappers,” although his primary target is non-mumble rapper Machine Gun Kelly, in response to Kelly’s 2012 tweet calling Eminem’s daughter Hailie “hot” when she was just 16; his 2015 “blackballed” claim on Hot 97 — allegations MGK directly pinned on Eminem during a 2017 LA Leakers freestyle. The tension finally reached a breaking point in 2018 after MGK took subliminal shots on Tech N9ne’s “No Reason (The Mosh Pit Song),” prompting Eminem to respond.
• Following the song’s release, Kelly celebrated by posting a video of himself popping champagne while dancing to the track. Three days later, he released his response, “Rap Devil,” which was generally well received and widely seen within the hip-hop community as a must-respond for Eminem. Eleven days after that, Eminem released “Killshot,” widely regarded as his victorious reply.
• The song marks the first Eminem track to feature Royce Da 5’9” since the “Bad Meets Evil” song from The Slim Shady LP, although the two had collaborated several times between the two songs, just not on an Eminem track.
• Tay Keith, producer of the song’s first section, also produced “Look Alive” by BlocBoy JB and Drake, featuring the same piano effect.

Words from Eminem

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For the record, the thing that [Machine Gun Kelly] was saying about my daughter, I didn’t even know about that — it never hit my radar. And then one day, you know, you go down the fuckin’ wormhole, the YouTube and whatever, and I see “Machine Gun Kelly talks about Eminem’s daughter”. So I click on it like, “Yo, why is he?” — then he starts doing a press run basically about Hailie. I’m like, “What the fuck? Yo, my man better chill.” So that’s not why I dissed him. The reason that I dissed him is actually a lot more petty than that. The reason that I dissed him is because, first, he said, “I’m the greatest rapper alive since my favorite rapper banned me from Shade 45,” or whatever he said, like I’m trying to hinder his career. I don’t give a fuck about your career. You think I actually fuckin’ think about you? Do you know how many fuckin’ rappers there are that are better than you? You’re not even in the fuckin’ conversation. I don’t care if you fuckin’ blow or if you don’t blow — it doesn’t matter to me. […] I ain’t never made a call to Diddy — I got Diddy’s number. Just hit him up like, “Yo, Diddy, what up?” Never happened. […]

But then when you get on Tech N9ne’s album and you start sending shots and people start hitting me up like, “Yo, Machine Gun just dissed you.” I listened to it and I’m like, “Did he really diss me though?” Then somebody sends me a screenshot of his Twitter and it says, “Had some shit to get off my chest. You just rap. You not God” — some shit like that. […] Now I’m in this fuckin’ weird thing because I’m like, I gotta answer this motherfucker. And every time I do that, it makes that person — as irrelevant as people say I am in hip-hop — I make them bigger by getting into this thing where I’m like, I want to destroy him, but I also don’t want to make him bigger because now you’re a fuckin’ enemy. [“Rap Devil”] — it’s not bad for him. He has some good lines in it. […] I’m gonna wait for a second [to reply to “Rap Devil”] because if people start firing off and I try to answer everybody that I dissed on Kamikaze or had words about, I’m gonna be going the next five fuckin’ years making diss song after diss song.