Songfacts®:

• This blend of rap, rock and electronica is centered on a sample of Cab Calloway's 1943 tune "Hi-De-Ho Man." That song is a rework of the jazz singer's signature number, "Minnie the Moocher."
• White told Rolling Stone he had the idea of sampling "Hi-De-Ho Man" after hearing it on the radio in the kitchen one day. He thought to himself, "You know what would be great? It'd be great to sample that scatting that Cab Calloway does on there and have that scatting go along with a drumbeat."
  
  So White sampled it, came up with a drum beat that went along with the sample, a bassline for the drum beat, and continued adding bits and pieces.
• Back in his pre-teen days, White was watching TV with his dad when old footage of Calloway appeared on the screen. His father told him, "That guy is amazing, he was a big-band leader and real wild man.'"
  
  Calloway clearly impressed White, who also covered his 1933 interpretation of "Saint James Infirmary Blues" on the debut eponymous White Stripes album. "He was great because he could work with humor and music," White told The Sun. "Some people try and come off as goofy and ridiculous."
• A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip contributes his own scat vocals to the song. The two originally got together when White contributed to three tracks on A Tribe Called Quest's We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service album. Q-Tip continued sending him tracks and White thought he might be interested in joining him on "Hi-De-Ho." He sent the rapper the music with the Cab Calloway sample on it, and five minutes later he sent it back with his own scatting on it.
  
  "By the time I ended up even getting to mixing, what genre is this song?" White reflected to Apple Music. "If someone was going to label it, I don't know. It was really interesting."