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by Eminem (featuring Alicia Keys)

Album: Revival (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • Eminem made national headlines back in October 2017 after he took on Donald Trump in a scathing freestyle recorded for the BET Hip-Hop Awards. This massive power ballad finds Slim Shady upping the ante against America's Commander-in-Chief by comparing him with Hitler.

    Nazi, I do not see a way y'all differ
    And all you got are race cards, bigot
    The swastika with your name carved in it
    Should be your trademark, 'cause hate's all you played off
    And you just lick the plate off
    So I guess it pays to feed off of chaos
    So basically, you ate off Hitler!
    But you ain't ruinin' our country, punk


    Later Eminem raps about how he regrets shaking Trump's hand at the MTV Shady National Convention that he held in 2004.

    Take it back to the Shady national convention
    Wish I woulda spit on it before I went to shake his hand
    At the event or maybe had the wherewithal
    To know that he was gonna try to tear apart


    The Shady convention was a promotional performance for Eminem's Encore album in which he ran for president. Donald Trump was brought in for the occasion to introduce the rapper, and actually had nothing but nice words to say about him. He endorsed Slim Shady as well as promising to vote for him in the election.
  • Speaking to Vulture, Eminem said that he can no longer enjoy watching the news because Donald Trump makes him "all stressed out."

    "The people that support him are the people he cares about the least and they don't even realize it," he added. "At what point do you - a working-class citizen, someone who's trying to make s--t better for you and your family - think this guy who's never known struggle his entire f---ing life, who avoided the military because of bone spurs, who says he's a billionaire, is really looking out for you? He's got people brainwashed."
  • The piano-based song is hooked around a soaring vocal from Alicia Keys, who calls for America to rise up and unite. Eminem explained during a "Fireside Chat" on his SiriusXM Shade45 channel that Keys was actually in the studio with him to record her part.

    "We got the chance to actually collaborate, so that was super important, and I also feel like having somebody on a song like that, to me, just made it mean more. It just felt right to me."
  • Regular Eminem collaborator Skylar Grey co-wrote the hook with Alicia Keys, while hip-hop producer Just Blaze helped Em with the beat. Just Blaze is best known for producing T.I.'s chart-topper "Live Your Life."
  • Brooklyn rapper OnCue received a writing credit after he convinced Just Blaze to give him a chance to write for the track.

    "I was like, 'Yo, let me write a hook,'" OnCue told DJ Booth. "It spiraled from there and ended up being the bridge. Skylar Grey also wrote on [the record] and someone else, on the tail end of the process."

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