Though SZA’s Grammy nominated hit “Kill Bill” was an instant standout from her sophomore album, SOS, the St. Louis-born singer says she wasn’t immediately convinced about the song for several reasons.
In the cover story for Variety’s Hitmaker of the Year issue, SZA and the track’s co-writer and co-producer Rob Bisel break down some of the behind-the-scenes happenings as the song was being put together. According to Bisel, who co-produced the song with Carter Lang, he played the track for her in a session, and at first, he was unclear if the track moved her.
“She was just sitting there quietly on her phone in the back of the studio,” Bisel says. “I didn’t really know if she was writing or just scrolling through Instagram. But after 10 minutes of silence, she was like, ‘OK, I got this idea for this song. It might be a little too crazy, but let me know what you think.’ And then she sang, ‘I just killed my ex…’ and the whole hook from that point on. Her lyric and melody was written from top to bottom in no more than an hour, right there on the spot.”
Though the lyrics seemed to flow out of her relatively quickly, once she had put pen to paper, the 34-year-old singer/songwriter says she was initially unsure of the song and if she could even get away with such a recording.
“I hated it,” SZA recalled before clarifying. “Well, I didn’t hate it. But I was like, ‘Can I say this? Is it silly?’ Rob was like, ‘You have to say it!'”
SZA went on to share that she also was on the fence about the violent nature of the song and whether people would take it seriously.
“So I sent it to my homegirl, and she was like, ‘I don’t know. I think you should maybe say something to clarify,'” she says. “I was really scared that people would harm each other, ’cause some people are f—— strange. But it was a joke.”
Thankfully, fans took the joke of a song well as it has become a fan favorite and even topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks, spending almost a whole calendar year on the chart.
SZA leads this year’s Grammy nominees with nine nominations, with “Kill Bill” nominated for the coveted Record of the Year Grammy and Song of the Year.
