Killshot
Song Meaning

“Killshot” is Eminem’s diss track response to Machine Gun Kelly’s “Rap Devil,” itself a comeback to Eminem’s “Not Alike” 3 7. Produced by IllaDaProducer, the beat was sent to Eminem the morning “Rap Devil” dropped, and the title doubles as a reference to the 2008 film “Killshot,” about a family named Colson, which happens to be MGK’s real surname 2. Across the track Eminem mimics MGK’s flow while ridiculing his commercial failures, stage name, and man bun, directly countering specific “Rap Devil” lines 2 6.

The meaning

“Killshot” is built entirely as a rebuttal, arriving just eleven days after Machine Gun Kelly’s “Rap Devil,” which had attacked Eminem’s sobriety, age, and career in response to the shots Eminem took at MGK on “Not Alike” 3 8. The feud itself traces back further, to a 2012 tweet MGK sent about Eminem’s daughter Hailie, which Eminem first addressed on “Not Alike” before escalating here 3 12. Even the title carries a layered insult: it borrows the name of a 2008 thriller about a family named Colson under attack from a hitman, a pointed nod to MGK’s real name, Richard Colson Baker 2 10.

Much of the song is spent undercutting MGK’s credibility and commercial standing. Eminem raps, “But I’m 45 and I’m still outselling you / By 29, I had three albums that had blew,” directly contrasting his own sales record with MGK’s, a line that anchors the track’s broader argument about who has actually earned staying power 6 8. He also frames the whole exchange as a mismatch, later threatening to “put the Midwesterner’s career next to Ja Rule and Benzino,” invoking past rivals he’s already dispatched 6.

Eminem answers “Rap Devil” almost line for line. MGK had rapped, “You were named after a candy, I was named after a gangster,” and Eminem fires back with jabs at MGK’s stage name and man bun: “How you gonna name yourself after a damn gun and have a man-bun?” 2 10. He also revisits the “Rap Devil” callbacks to 8 Mile and cereal, folding MGK’s own material back into the attack 3. Elsewhere, mimicking MGK’s “Rap Devil” flow while boasting about two decades in the game, Eminem casts himself as the seasoned veteran and MGK as an overmatched newcomer 2 10.

The track also drags in side conflicts, mocking MGK’s relationship history by referencing Halsey and her rekindled connection to G-Eazy, tied to MGK’s separate feud with G-Eazy 6 8. Eminem closes with one of the song’s most talked-about lines, joking that the day MGK “put out a hit’s the day Diddy admits that he put the hit out that got Pac killed,” a jarring, seemingly tangential jab that name-drops Diddy and Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder before Eminem immediately walks it back with “I’m just playin’, Diddy” in the outro 1 6 8. Songfacts summarizes the record’s overall structure as Eminem “ridiculing MGK’s commercial success (or lack thereof)” while reasserting his own dominance 6, and by the end the song functions less as a nuanced statement and more as a targeted, line-by-line dismantling of “Rap Devil” itself 2 10.

Last updated 2026-07-19