Alex Martin

Readers should be advised that there are references to suicide, sexual and domestic abuse and violence in this article.

‘Kim’ is the 16th track on The Marshall Mathers LP, which is widely regarded as Eminem’s magnum opus. Both ‘Kim’ and the album more broadly are provocative and divisive but largely revered. Various tracks feature intentionally shocking and offensive lyrics: rampant homophobia throughout the first verse of ‘Criminal’ and allusions to the rape and murder of Eminem’s own mother in ‘Kill You’. ‘Kim’, however, holds its own in this company.

I discovered ‘Kim’ after seeing that The Guardian’s Thomas Hobbs had placed it at 4th on his ranking of the greatest Eminem songs ever. He described it as “arguably the darkest song to ever appear on a diamond-selling album” that “powerfully reflects a misguided lovesick rage”. Hobbs characterises the song as having “unsettling schizophrenic power”. 

Another interpretation is simply that the song is an incel’s fever dream. ‘Kim’ provides an outlet for Eminem’s hatred towards his then-wife, Kim Mathers, with whom he was embroiled in a dispute over seeing his daughter Hailie. It viciously details how, after her (fictitious) husband and four-year-old stepson are murdered (but Hailie is left sleeping), Kim is verbally abused, abducted and ultimately murdered too. 

‘Kim’ vs ‘Stan’: two different car crashes

Let’s compare ‘Kim’ to ‘Stan’, another six-minute story-driven track about a murderous lover from the same album. ‘Stan’ now lends its name to toxic fan culture, since amplified by social media; the dark origins of the song have been largely forgotten as we joke about ‘stanning’ celebrities today. The start of the track is unassuming, but tension quickly ratchets up. ‘Stan’ is thoughtful and prescient, and Eminem more clearly disavows the abuser’s actions towards the end of the song in a way that naturally concludes the narrative without feeling preachy. ‘Kim’ represents a relentless expansion of Stan’s psyche as he records his third and final cassette. It lacks the emotional range of ‘Stan’, but there is still enough nuance to see that Eminem does, in his own sick and twisted way, believe that he cares for Kim.

One major difference between the two tracks is that the anger in ‘Stan’ is directed primarily towards Eminem rather than the female victim, which is perhaps what makes the song more palatable. By contrast, ‘Kim’ spends 20 seconds introducing Eminem as a loving father before plunging into the venomous narrative. It starts at full throttle; its achievement is managing to sustain the horror for the full six minutes. Undercurrents of anger flow and crackle as Eminem veers from fury, to pain, to rage again. There is no humour to distract from the depravity. If ‘Stan’ is a slow-motion car crash, ‘Kim’ crashes the car in real time and forces you to watch as the bodies burn.

Raw storytelling or gratuitous violence?

There are different ways to experience music. With ‘Kim’, you aren’t invited to sing along or dance but rather feel repulsed by the nightmarish enthralment. The story is undeniably compelling and the backing track adds to the atmosphere, but the focus rests squarely on Eminem’s lyricism and emotive delivery. ‘Kim’ asks at what point you draw the line between raw musical storytelling and gratuitous violence. 

I don’t think ‘Kim’ can be said to trivialise domestic abuse, but there is a case to be made that it glorifies it. Eminem doesn’t appear to suffer any negative consequences, at least not in the song; it ends with the sounds of him dragging Kim’s body to his car. The track does nothing to challenge any misogynistic listeners who might support Eminem’s actions (whereas he at least criticises Stan in that song’s final verse). As a raw, harrowing examination of the mind of a terrible man, ‘Kim’ is captivating, but at face value it is little more than nauseating bile. 

While ‘Stan’ is reflective, ‘Kim’ is disturbing. It is plausible that the song is an outlet for Eminem’s genuine fantasies in the wake of his split from Kim, or even that it is intended as some kind of threat. Some have suggested that the song is a positive outlet for jilted men to release their rage  rather than storing it up internally. However, ‘Kim’ risks legitimising such feelings, and it offers no chance for Kim Mathers to defend herself. Eminem only gives Kim a voice to scream, beg for mercy and then die. The narrative is solely from his perspective, and there is no Dido sample to distract from the horrors unfolding.

Enduring legacies

For centuries, a common literary trope has been that the only women undeserving of violent murder are those who have been perfectly virtuous, such as Othello’s Desdemona. In some instances, such virtue is used to highlight the injustice of violent men, but the implication remains that an unfaithful woman is somehow more deserving of inhumane treatment. Women are still held to a higher standard than men across the world in this regard. 

In ‘Kim’, Eminem doesn’t even suggest that Kim was unfaithful; instead he admits to his own infidelity. Therefore, his warped justification for the murders of Kim, her new husband and their child is that she dared to move on from him. In the real world, Kim Mathers has admitted that there were reciprocated affairs in what appeared to be a toxic marriage. But only one of them has ever expressed a desire to murder the other because of this. 

As with much of Eminem’s discography, the identity of the protagonist in ‘Kim’ is not entirely clear cut. Eminem (the most enduring moniker for Marshall Mathers) also used the character ‘Slim Shady’ for some of his earlier, more outrageous songs. However, the line “get a grip, Marshall” suggests that Marshall Mathers is singing without a mask. He has said in interviews that ‘Kim’ offered him the chance to tell his ex-wife how he really felt. It seems fairly clear, then, that these lyrics come directly from him.

Meanwhile, although Kim Mathers has called Eminem “arrogant” and “disrespectful” in interviews, she also recognised that he was an “excellent father”. ‘Kim’ left her feeling “embarrassed” and “humiliated”, and anxious about what Eminem’s fans would think of her. It is curious that Eminem chooses to explicitly disavow the violence of his own ‘Stans’ while encouraging them to sing along as he rants about torturing his ex-wife. Kim Mathers has spoken about how she attempted suicide after Eminem performed ‘Kim’ at a concert she attended (after he had promised her he wouldn’t), because she was so distraught “watching everybody else singing and laughing, jumping around in approval”. She also brought a $10-million defamation lawsuit linked to the song during their tumultuous divorce, which ultimately settled out of court. Eminem has since admitted that he “doesn’t really listen to the song anymore”, but that does not detract from the fact that its legacy endures, and its impact on Kim and their children remains. 

‘Kim’ cannot be both a cautionary tale and fantasy

In 2001, music journalist Robert Christgau told Rolling Stone that the notion of ‘Kim’ and Eminem advocating the murder of a cheating girlfriend was “a disgusting absurdity on the part of people who don’t give Eminem credit for being more intelligent than they are”. Meanwhile, Snoop Dogg’s analysis was to ask, “who doesn’t feel like that sometimes? [Eminem] was just crazy enough to write a song about it”. One critic is in indignation that we could take the lyrics seriously, while another is casually suggesting that they are relatable. The absurdity is that ‘Kim’ tries to have it both ways; it cannot be simultaneously a cautionary tale and a fantasy. In reality, it is a fantasy dressed up as a cautionary tale so as to afford it a veneer of acceptability, with Eminem blatantly demonstrating the power he has over Kim in a way that feels tantamount to abuse.

In isolation, ‘Kim’ is horrifying enough, but the context of the song being about a real relationship and person make it much harder to praise. This is amplified when compared with ‘Stan’, which tells a more satisfying, imaginative and complete story. Ultimately, ‘Kim’ is a fascinating, brutal, complex, hateful deluge of rage. It deserves nuanced discourse, which is, ironically, the antithesis of the fan and cancel culture ‘Stan’ is now associated with. But it continues to surprise me that the prevailing critical view of the song appears to be that it is a disturbing masterpiece, with such little regard for the very real woman at its heart, Kim Mathers.