Songfacts®:

• This is based on a 1996 song by Tupac called "Me And My Girlfriend." On Tupac's song, his "girlfriend" is his gun, but in "'03 Bonnie And Clyde," Jay-Z makes the girlfriend literal.
• Bonnie and Clyde were Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. They went on a crime spree in 1932, committing several robberies and killing an estimated 13 people along the way. After a famous manhunt, they were killed by police in 1934. Their story was made into a movie in 1967 starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. The film glorified their story and created the image of Bonnie and Clyde as a romantic couple rebelling from authority, roles Jay-Z and Beyoncé inhabit in this song.
• This was the first musical collaboration between Beyoncé and Jay-Z. She was the most prominent member of the group Destiny's Child and was getting ready for a solo album after playing Foxxy Cleopatra in the movie Austin Powers in Goldmember. Kelly Rowland became the first member of Destiny's Child to have a hit outside the group when she teamed up with Nelly for the song "Dilemma," which went to #1 in August 2002. "'03 Bonnie And Clyde" reached its chart peak of #4 in December 2002 (yes, "'03 Bonnie And Clyde" was actually released in '02).
  
  Joining an established rap star was a great way to launch a solo career at the time, as the airways were flooded with hits featuring a male rapper doing the verses and a female singer coming in for the hook. Most of these involved either Ja Rule or Ashanti.
• Beyoncé and Jay-Z were a real couple at the time, although they kept coy about their relationship. Over the next few years, they were seen in public more and more, and it became apparent they were an item. This song marks the first clues that they are dating, as Jay declares them "the new Bobby and Whitney" (referring to the happier times of Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston's love affair) and raps, "Only time we don't speak is during Sex and the City."
• The chorus lyrics:
  
  All I need in this life, you see
  Is me and my girlfriend
  
  Come from Mariah Carey's 1999 song "How Much," which is also based on Tupac's "Me And My Girlfriend." In Tupac's song, it's:
  
  All I need in this life of sin
  Is me and my girlfriend
  Down to ride to the bloody end
  Just me and my girlfriend
• In the bridge, Beyoncé sings some of the Prince song "If I Was Your Girlfriend":
  
  If I was your girlfriend
  I'll be there for you if somebody hurts you
  Even if the somebody was me
  
  The Prince song was a modest hit back in 1987, so many of Beyoncé's fans didn't know she lifted it.
• This was produced by Kanye West, who was an in-house producer at Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella Records at the time. His first solo album came out in 2004.
• Directed by Chris Robinson, most of the video was filmed in Tijuana using a real Mexican police force. It stars Johnathon Schaech, known for his roles in DC's Legends of Tomorrow and That Thing You Do!, and Lance Reddick, who's role as a cop wasn't a stretch: at the time he was playing Lt. Cedric Daniels in The Wire.
• The only songwriters officially credited on this track are Prince and the four writers on Tupac's "Me And My Girlfriend": Darrell Harper, Rick Rouse, Tupac Shakur, Tyrone Wrice.
• At the time, Jay-Z was beefing with Nas, who released his song "Made You Look" around the same time. His song takes some cracks at Jay-Z, calling him "a slave to a page in my rhyme book."
• Jay-Z songs don't show up in many commercials, but this one appeared in a 2022 spot for Airbnb starring a couple who had been married for 57 years and found themselves still very much in love at a villa in Begur, Spain. The tagline: Baecation.