Kim (song)
| "Kim" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Eminem from the album The Marshall Mathers LP | |
| Released | May 23, 2000 |
| Recorded | 1999 |
| Genre | Horrorcore[1][2][3] |
| Length | 6:17 |
| Label | Aftermath, Interscope |
| Writer(s) | Marshall Mathers, Jeff Bass, Mark Bass |
| Producer(s) | F.B.T. |
"Kim" is a song by American rapper Eminem which appears on his 2000 album The Marshall Mathers LP. The song reflects intense anger and hatred toward Eminem's then-wife Kim Mathers and features Eminem imitating her voice, and ends with Eminem killing Kim and later burying her. "Kim" was the first song the rapper recorded for the album, shortly after finishing work on The Slim Shady LP in late 1998.[4] Eminem wrote this song, along with "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" (where Eminem and his daughter go to the lake to dispose of Kim's dead body), at a time when he and Kim were having marital problems and Kim was preventing him from seeing his daughter Hailie. The song has been cited as an extreme example of misogyny in hip hop culture.
On the clean version of The Marshall Mathers LP, this song is replaced by a clean version of "The Kids" (an unedited version can be found on the CD single of "The Way I Am", the UK and deluxe editions of The Marshall Mathers LP).
Background
Since meeting in 1989, Eminem and Kimberly Anne "Kim" Scott have had an on-and-off relationship. They had a daughter together named Hailie Jade, who was born on Christmas Day 1995. The couple married in 1999 and divorced in 2001, later re-married in 2006 and divorced that same year. "Kim" is the second song by Eminem about Kim, the first being "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" from his major-label debut album The Slim Shady LP (1999). An instrumental version of the song is played at the start of the music video of "The Way I Am".
Eminem is both emotional and aggressive throughout the entire song, as the song portrays him murdering Kim.[5] The song begins with Eminem in Kim's home (after murdering her husband and her stepson). Eminem is talking calmly to their daughter, who is sleeping, and subsequently starts to shout verbal abuse at Kim, which remains a common element throughout the entire song. Eminem sings "So long, bitch you did me so wrong/I don't want to go on living in this world without you" in the hook two times.
In the second verse, the setting changes to Eminem and Kim in a car. During the verse, he shouts "There's a four year old little boy laying dead with a slit throat in your living room!". In the album version of the song, the words "four" and "boy" are censored, because of the Columbine High School Massacre and its reference to child murder. An uncensored, rare version of "Kim" was leaked onto the Internet,[6] before the massacre and album release, which was titled "Bitch So Wrong", which doesn't censor the words "four" and "boy", but has bad quality and is slightly different from the album version: It doesn't have the intro and outro, smashes are not heard when he says "This couch, this TV, this whole house is mine", the truck's horn is different when he says "What the fuck's this guy's problem on the side of me?!", and rustling is not heard in the woods when Kim is running away from Eminem. The chorus of the uncensored version is also different from the album version, with the album version echoing Eminem's voice, the choruses sound different each time in the uncensored version, but the last chorus is similar to the choruses of the album version. The song continues with Eminem driving frantically through traffic, and stopping in the woods, where Kim tries to run away, but fails. The final verse ends with Eminem slitting Kim's throat, while screaming "Bleed, bitch! Bleed!". The song then ends in a prolonged outro during which the listener can hear a skit called "Mommy", which was released on The Slim Shady EP, which was placed before "Just the Two of Us". The skit includes sounds of a dead body being dragged through the grass and thrown into the trunk of a car. This same skit is played as the beginning of "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" (a later remastered version of "Just the Two of Us" from the Slim Shady EP), indicating the association between the two songs and the direct chronology of events.
Critical reception
The Rolling Stone album review of The Marshall Mathers LP stated that:
Things degenerate from there into the mountain of bile reserved for Kim, the mother of his baby and the star of the world's most public ongoing murder fantasy [...] 'Kim' has Eminem screaming at his ex in an insane stream-of-consciousness hate spew. There's little humor to blunt the shock of the hellbent animosity of 'Kim.' What makes it powerful is that, of course, he doesn't just hate her. It's the most harrowing sick-love song since Guns N' Roses' 'Used to Love Her.'[7]
While Entertainment Weekly wrote that:
'Kim', a prequel to '97 Bonnie and Clyde' is a shout-rapped enactment of domestic violence so real it chills... 'Stan' and 'Kim' blaze significant new ground for rap.[8]
In 2013 Complex ranked "Kim" at #21 on their list of the 25 most violent rap songs of all time[9] and at #4 on their list of the 25 most depressing rap songs.[10]
References
- ↑ "10 Horrorcore Tracks For Halloween". hotnewhiphop.com.
- ↑ "Eminem's Wife Attempts Suicide At Couple's Home". MTV.
- ↑ "Coyo Discusses His Top Six Horrorcore Rap Songs". Houston Press.
- ↑ "Hasted, 2011. p. 156". Google Books. 2003. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
- ↑ "Eminem Songs About Kim". Gunaxin.com. 2010-07-07. Retrieved 2012-02-17.
- ↑ "Eminem - Kim UNCENSORED (Original)". YouTube.com. 2008-10-28. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
- ↑ "The Marshall Mathers LP Eminem Review Rolling Stone". RollingStone.com. Retrieved 2012-04-30.
- ↑ "The Marshall Mathers LP". Entertainment Weekly. 2000-06-02. Retrieved 2012-02-17.
- ↑ The 25 Most Violent Rap Songs of All Time
- ↑ The 25 Most Depressing Rap Songs of All Time