Songfacts®:

• SZA recorded "Kill Bill" for her second album, SOS. Several of the tracks, including "I Hate U," "Shirt," and "Blind," find her upset with a toxic boyfriend. This song takes place after they've broken up and SZA is particularly enraged. So unhinged is the R&B star that she wants to kill both her ex and his new girlfriend.
• SZA named the song after Quentin Tarantino's martial arts duology of the same name.
  
  I might kill my ex, not the best idea
  His new girlfriend's next, how'd I get here?
  
  The lyrics correspond with the plot of the two 2003-2004 Kill Bill films.
• SZA wrote the song with her go-to producers, Rob Bisel and Carter Lang. Los Angeles producer Bisel worked on 20 out of the 23 tracks on SOS. Chicago songwriter Lang contributed to 13 of them.
• Directed by Christian Breslauer, the cinematic video pays homage to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films by recreating several iconic scenes and elements. Actress Vivica A. Fox, who played Vernita Green, the enemy of Una Thurman's The Bride character, has a supporting role. SZA appears as a reinterpretation of The Bride, dressed in a similar red and black jumpsuit and wielding a traditional Japanese sword as her weapon of choice.
  
  "I love Vivica A. Fox's character. I love Lucy Liu's character. I even love Bill because he's super complex," she told EW of the original 2000s films.
  
  "I feel like he doesn't understand why he did what he did," SZA continued. "He's void of emotion, but he loved The Bride so much that he couldn't stand her to be with anyone else. That was really complex and cool to me. It's a love story.'"
  
  Bresslauer added to Billboard it "seemed too on-the-nose" to have an Uma Thurman cameo, but Vivica A. Fox felt right. "She's got the look, she's got the swagger."
• "Kill Bill" was a hit, peaking at #2 on the Hot 100. However, SZA was peeved about the song's success, as she put little effort into making it. "It's always a song that I don't give a f–k about that's just super easy, not the s--t that I put so much heart and energy into," SZA told Billboard. "'Kill Bill' was super easy - one take, one night."
  
• SZA debuted "Kill Bill" live when she kicked off her North American arena tour in Columbus, Ohio, on February 21, 2023.
• SZA invited Doja Cat to feature on the song's remix. Doja Cat kicks off the new version with a slow-burning verse, recounting a brutal encounter with her former partner and his current flame.
  
  The duo previously worked together on their 2021 collaboration "Kiss Me More" off Doja's Planet Her.
  
  Doja was planning to feature on SZA's single "Shirt" for SOS but she had to drop out after undergoing emergency vocal cord surgery.
• Following eight weeks at #2 on the Hot 100, "Kill Bill" finally jumped to the top spot on the chart dated April 29, 2023. The song's climb to the summit followed the release of its remix adding Doja Cat.
• The song broke the record for the longest run at the top of Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. On the tally dated June 3, 2023 "Kill Bill" sat at summit for its 21st week, overtaking the 20 weeks spent at the peak position by Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road."
  
  The record was taken by Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us," which notched its 22nd week at the summit on the list dated February 22, 2025.
• Carter Lang and Rob Bisel, the co-producers of SOS, would often exchange ideas, passing bits back and forth, asking, "Hey, what do you think of this? Want to experiment with it?" When Bisel shared his initial beat for what would become "Kill Bill," Lang felt it had the potential for something cooler.
  
  "Then, the following week, when Rob was away," Lang recounted to Consequence, "I worked on it again by myself and I was like starting to add little drum machine hits and stuff like that and a polyrhythm started happening that kind of had some swing in it and I started to move that block around until it started to evoke a different rhythm. I was like, 'Okay, this is what it's supposed to be.' And then the rest of the elements started flooding in, just flooding my mind."
  
  A few weeks later, when everyone was in the studio together, it was the time to support and create. They would hang out, bond, and listen to various sounds. Lang dropped by, played some tracks, and SZA explored a few ideas.
  
  It was getting late, and when Bisel briefly stepped out, Lang played the beat that would later become "Kill Bill." Initially known as "Igloo," SZA started humming along to it. Lang thought, "Maybe she likes this, this is cool." When Bisel returned, she had developed a full-fledged melody, albeit different from its final form.
  
  The following day, they continued working on it and Bisel contacted Lang, saying, "Hey, this is turning into something incredible." Initially, Lang thought the sharp lyrics contrasted with the sunny beat, but it also contained elements that exuded a certain desert-like, somewhat sinister quality that evoked the vibe of the Kill Bill movie. They decided to lean into this vibe, shaping the track into the hit song it became.
  
• SZA resents the success of "Kill Bill" because it came with no effort. "The songs that I care so much about, that I tried so hard on, people be like, 'That's nice,'" she told The Wall Street Journal. "But the s--t that took no thought and came out of my mouth in five seconds? 'Girl, that's the one.'"
• The staff at Billboard named this their Best Song of 2023. They said:
  
  "On her sophomore album SOS, SZA set out on a fearless sonic voyage, dipping her toes in different genres from grunge to gospel – but one single particularly slayed. 'Kill Bill' paints a gruesome picture from its title alone... With her first totally ubiquitous smash and its blockbuster parent album, SZA ascended to pop superstardom without compromising her sound, but rather showing how she could expand it. In short: SZA killed it with this song."
• SZA performed "Kill Bill" at the Grammy Awards in 2024, joined by some impressive swordswomen who evoked the lethal ladies in the Kill Bill movie. The song was up for Song Of The Year and Record Of The Year but lost to "What Was I Made For?" by Billie Eilish and "Flowers" by Miley Cyrus.