Words from Eminem

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I came off the European tour in October of ’99 and called Dre to tell him I needed some new tracks. Meanwhile, there was a beat playing in the background. He put the phone up to the speaker, and it was the beat for “Kill You.” I told him, “Send me that shit.”

I recorded it weeks later when I started working on The Marshall Mathers LP. The first thing I came up with was the hook. I wanted to open the album with the song because everybody in the press was asking, “What’s he gonna rap about? He’s not miserable anymore. He can’t rap about being broke no more.”

That’s why I started with that line. The whole hook is basically bashing women. Then, at the end of the song, I say, “I’m just kidding, ladies. You know I love you.” It’s kind of like you can say whatever you want as long as you say you’re joking at the end.

The whole idea behind the song was to say some of the most fucked-up shit possible — just to let people know that I was back, that I hadn’t lost it, that I wasn’t compromising anything, and that I hadn’t changed. If anything, I got worse.