Eminem Explains Why He Based ‘Music To Be Murdered By’ On Alfred Hitchcock

Last month, Eminem dropped his latest album, Music to Be Murdered By—which borrows its title from Alfred Hitchcock’s album of the same name. In a new episode of Crook’s Corner, the Shady Records head revealed how he decided to base his LP around Hollywood’s “Master of Suspense.”

As it turns out, the concept stems from an old beat created by executive producer, Dr. Dre. “Dre had the sample years ago and he made a beat to it,” Em told host Kxng Crooked. “One day, it just popped in my head. I can’t remember why. So I hit him, and I was like, ‘Whatever happened to that beat?’ He was like, ‘Oh it’s still around.'”

He ended up sprucing up the instrumental with “some drums and shit,“ and the song centered his focus on the director’s 1958 album. “I started thinking like, ‘Yo that whole concept is crazy, Music to be Murdered By,’” he continued. “I wonder if I could play off this whole Alfred Hitchcock thing. And then Dre started hitting me with ideas and was like, 'Yo you need to listen to this album that he has.’ So he sent me the link to that. I started listening, and I was like, ‘Yo, I could base this whole album off that.’”

The British filmmaker’s influence filters into the finer details—as well as the secondary album cover:

“Alfred (Interlude)” also samples Hitchcock’s spoken word greeting from the title track that opens the 62-year-old album:

How do you do? Ladies and gentlemen
My name is Alfred Hitchcock and this is Music To Be Murdered By
It is mood music in a jugular vein
So why don’t you relax? Lean back and enjoy yourself
Until the coroner comes

But some references had to be left on the cutting board. “There was actually some stuff that didn’t make it on there that I was trying to get on there,” Em said on Crook’s Corner. “We couldn’t really work it out with the sample clearing. But I had it even more intertwined than it was, and we had to pick and choose the best pieces to put on there just for sampling.”

This is Eminem’s first surprise album since 2018’s Kamikaze. MTBMB became his tenth-consecutive No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and it includes features by Anderson .Paak, Ed Sheeran, and the late Juice WRLD.

Watch the full Crook’s Corner interview above, and read all the lyrics to Eminem’s Music to Be Murdered By on Genius now.