Songfacts®:

• Here Gerald Earl Gillum, aka G-Eazy, reflects on the dark side of fame.
  
  When you move this fast as I'm movin'
  All the toxic things that I'm using
  All the substances I'm abusin'
  All the sex, and the drugs, and the boozin'
  
  G-Eazy acknowledges his overindulging. He blames his demons on the stress of trying to live up to people's expectations and his attempts to maintain the success he's established.
• This is the title track of G-Eazy's third album. "The concept of it is kinda split in half and it's two CDs, but for all intents and purposes its 20 songs, it's just a long album," he told Billboard.
  
  G-Eazy added: "The concept of it is kinda like its about the lifestyle, 'The Beautiful and Damned.' Like being a kid, having the dream of doing this, starting from square one, from outside looking in from without having nothing — to chasing this dream, and then all these years down the road of following this yellow brick road trying to get to where you're going, one day waking up and being like, 'Did it take me where I wanted to go?' This fantasy of, like, sex, drugs, & rock 'n' roll is kinda clichéd, but it's clichéd."
• Los Angeles native Zoe Nash croons the song's hook. The singer-songwriter released her debut single "Rather Die" on December 15, 2017, the same date that The Beautiful & Damned was dropped.