Background and release
In 2012, Machine Gun Kelly tweeted about Eminem's daughter, Hailie Mathers: "Ok, so I just saw a picture of Eminem's daughter... and I have to say, she is hot as fuck, in the most respectful way possible cuz Em is king". At the time, Hailie was 16 years old and MGK was 22 years old. In an interview in 2015, MGK said about the tweet: "Pictures of [Hailie] had came out, and I'm like, what, 20 years old, 21 at the time? I said 'She's beautiful, but all respect due. Eminem is king. What's wrong with that? Is there a 15-year age gap where I'm a creep for that? I was 21, dawg. Certain people took it, and ran with it and hyped it up."[2] In a 2018 interview, Machine Gun Kelly said he did not know how old Hailie was and had reacted after seeing a headline about her saying she was all grown up. Machine Gun Kelly claims that years ago, while he did not speak to Eminem directly, he did speak with Eminem's manager and agreed to delete the tweet.[3]
Eminem then banned him from going to Shade 45, a radio station owned by Eminem. MGK also collaborated on a song with Tech N9ne and allegedly sent subliminal insults towards Eminem. On August 31, 2018, Eminem released a surprise album, Kamikaze, on which he insulted several artists in multiple diss tracks, including the song "Not Alike", where he insulted MGK specifically.[4]
Response
Eminem released a response diss track, "Killshot", on September 14, 2018. Its official audio on YouTube has 343,370,191 views (as of August 11, 2020). On "Killshot", Eminem refers to Machine Gun Kelly as a "mumble rapper".[5]
Music video
A music video for the song was released on WorldStarHipHop's YouTube channel and website on September 3, 2018. By September 2020, the video had reached 301 million views, amassing 2.7 million likes and 1.3 million dislikes on YouTube.[6]
Personnel
Credits adapted from Tidal.[7]
Machine Gun Kelly – composition, vocals, recording, engineering
Ronny J – composition, production
Nils – composition, production
Steve "Rock Star" Dickey – mixing
Tony Dawsey – mastering
