Negative Creep

The song remained a set list regular for the next four years, until its final live performance on April 9, 1993, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California.

It was jammed on briefly during Nirvana's MTV Unplugged appearance in November 1993, after being requested by an audience member, but both Cobain and Novoselic said that they no longer knew how to play it.

[10] James Jackson Toth of Stereogum called it a "chilling ode to social awkwardness" during which "Cobain, sounding like a cross between Lemmy and a gargoyle, acknowledges his position as a shadowy outsider–even revels in it.

"[11] Steve Fisk, who produced Nirvana's Blew EP in 1989, offered an alternate theory of the song's meaning, saying that "I got told it was about the guy who lived across the street from the duplex and would come over while Kurt was gone to try to smoke [Cobain's then-girlfriend] Tracy [Marander] out.

"[12] The song received some criticism from members of the Seattle music scene in the late 1980s because of the lyric, "Daddy's little girl ain't a girl no more," which closely resembled the lyrics to "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More" by Nirvana's Sub Pop label mates Mudhoney.

[14] In 2022, Revolver named it one of the "10 Heaviest Grunge Songs of All Time," with Eli Enis writing that "for every glimpse at future pop-rock supremacy on Bleach, there's another song like this, a motorik, almost thrashy ripper that sees Kurt Cobain spitting back his own ugly self-perception — 'I'm a negative creep and I'm stoned' — with the wiry wrath of the picked-on kid finally taking a swing at his bully.