The song reflects intense anger and hatred toward his then-wife Kim Mathers and features Eminem imitating her voice, ending with him murdering her and later putting her body in the trunk of his car.
"Kim" was the first song Eminem recorded for the album, shortly after finishing work on The Slim Shady LP in late 1998.
The Rolling Stone album review of The Marshall Mathers LP stated that: Things degenerate from there into the mountain of bile reserved for Kim, the mother of his baby and the star of the world's most public ongoing murder fantasy [...] 'Kim' has Eminem screaming at his ex in an insane stream-of-consciousness hate spew.
'[7]While Entertainment Weekly wrote that: 'Kim', a prequel to '97 Bonnie and Clyde' is a shout-rapped enactment of domestic violence so real it chills... 'Stan' and 'Kim' blaze significant new ground for rap.
[8]In 2001, Robert Christgau told Rolling Stone that songs like "Kim" and Ghostface Killah's "Wildflower" employ sexist content in an artful way that offers insight into its pathology, citing them as exceptions to the usual "reflexive and violent sexism" popularized by rap and heavy metal: "[T]he nonsense that 'Kim' advocates the murder of wives who cheat – what an absurdity, and what a disgusting absurdity on the part of people who don't give Eminem credit for being more intelligent than they are, quite frankly.