Eminem’s record-breaking diss track, “KILLSHOT,” was the final salvo in his late-summer feud with Machine Gun Kelly. The scorching song was a direct response to MGK’s own diss track, “Rap Devil,” which was in turn prompted by the shots Eminem took at the Cleveland rapper on “Not Alike.” Production on “KILLSHOT” is handled by IllaDaProducer, who also placed several tracks on Eminem’s most recent album, Kamikaze. The Florida-based beatmaker spoke with Genius about creating the track on the latest episode of Deconstructed.
IllaDaProducer says the beat was originally destined for British rapper Giggs, who always asks him for “horror movie beats.” To find that vibe, he started with a piano he found in a loop pack from DopeBoyz Muzic. “It was the chord progression that really stood out to me,” he remembers. “It was really theatrical, like some Phantom Of The Opera. I wrote automation on it to make it breathe a little bit. It gives it like a pumping effect.”
From there, IllaDaProducer made sure the snare had “a lot of pop” by using a plugin called Sausage Fattener and moved on to the hi-hats to give the track a little bounce. After adding the second hi-hat with a reversed cymbal, he tried out four different kick drum patterns before settling on the final one. For the final sound, he programmed the 808. “It’s hitting in between the kicks, and it’s actually following some of the rhythm of the sample. So there’s rhythms that somebody that’s technical can just jump all over,” he explains.
To give the beat a dramatic breakdown, IllaDaProducer played around with the sample. “Since I didn’t use a lot of sounds in this beat, I used the ranging to build the drama and build the crescendo of the beat,” he says. “I took the sample and then I half-timed it. This is the sound by itself, and this is it with it on. It gave it a dramatic breakdown and he used it perfectly.”
Check out the full Deconstructed episode above to learn more about how the song was made, and read all the lyrics to Eminem’s “KILLSHOT” on Genius now.
