Samples and Interpolations
Trivia
- Eminem’s debut single, “Just Don’t Give A Fuck,” was first made available at the Slim Shady EP release party on December 10, 1997, at The Viper Room. He followed this with his major-label debut: a remixed version of the same track featured on his breakout album, The Slim Shady LP.
- In a 2022 interview with , described the decision to exclude this version from The Slim Shady LP as “heartbreaking.”
- The LP version, despite being the second released iteration, is actually the third version of the song. An LP demo version — distinguished by a different sample than “Gavotte & 6 Doubles” — was recorded during the sessions but remains officially unreleased.
Words from Eminem and Denaun Porter
““Just Don’t Give A Fuck” was a song that I wrote when I was staying at my mother’s house. It was also around the time that Hailie was born. […] Not being able to provide for my daughter, my living situation, etc., just started building up so much that I had just had it. “Just Don’t Give A Fuck” was actually the second song where people that knew me were like “What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” See, I didn’t normally talk about stuff like that. It just wasn’t my usual subject matter... My hype-man, Proof, said, “You need to quit talkin’ that drug shit,” because it seemed like it was from out of left field compared to what I usually rapped about.
I soon found myself doing things that I normally didn’t do. Like getting into drugs and drinkin’. […] Kim and I had Hailie, my producers F.B.T. were just about to give up on me, we weren’t payin’ rent to my moms, and just a whole bunch of other horrible shit was going on ... It was my first real song. It was when I first came up with the whole “Slim Shady” theme. I actually thought of the name and then wrote “Slim Shady / Brain-dead like Jim Brady,” and that’s when I went with the name.
“That started a formula for making songs to me. Once I heard the sample, before I even finished the beat, I would store it in my head. It was a Bob James record, and it was the most unique sounding record I had because it was all medieval sounding with harpsichords and shit. And we needed something that would say, “I’m Slim Shady.” That shit just made me feel like that.
I would tell him, “Yo I’m making this beat, it’s gonna be crazy.” I tried to tackle that beat three or four times. Then when he got that shit, it fucked him up, because at that time people weren’t making beats like that. I think he was really impressed. And it turned into what I thought was the best song on the EP.
I went to this garage sale this old lady had, and her husband had died. I would always walk by her house. And she had this crate outside, and it had about 150 records in it. It was huge. She stopped me and said, “Where do you go when you walk from here?” And I said, “I walk to 7 Mile and catch the bus to the west side because I go to the studio. I’m a music producer.”
She said, “My husband was into music. He always used to say, ‘That kid has something on his mind.’” I never knew that they watched me that closely. And she said, “I want you to have these records. They were his records.” And in that crate was the “Just Don’t Give A Fuck” sample. I had to drag the crate down the street in a red wagon. That crate of records rocked me for like a year. That’s all I had. I was broke as fuck.