Stephenson recorded a brief guitar part from one of Beck's songs onto an 8-track, looped it, and added a drum track to it. Stephenson then added his own sitar playing and other samples. At that point, Beck began writing and improvising lyrics for the recording. For the song's vocals, Beck attempted to emulate the rapping style of Public Enemy's Chuck D. According to Beck, the line that became the song's chorus originated because "When [Stephenson] played it back, I thought, 'Man, I'm the worst rapper in the world, I'm just a loser.' So I started singing 'I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.'" According to Rothrock, the song was largely finished in six and a half hours, with two minor overdubs several months later. Composition and lyrics Beck acknowledged the impact of folk on the song, saying "I'd realized that a lot of what folk music is about taking a tradition and reflecting your own time. I knew my folk music would take off, if I put hip-hop beats behind it." He had also perceived similarities between Delta blues and hip hop, which helped to inspire the song. The A.V. Club's Annie Zaleski opines that the song imitates abstract hip hop, while James Reed from The Boston Globe called it an alternative rock anthem, and Veronica Chambers for Vibe magazine described the song as a "folk-based hip hop song." "Loser" revolves around several recurring musical elements: a slide guitar riff, Stephenson's sitar, the bassline, and a tremolo guitar part. The song's drum track is sampled from a Johnny Jenkins cover of Dr. John's "I Walk on Guilded Splinters" from the 1970 album Ton-Ton Macoute!. During the song's break, there is a sample of a line of dialogue from the 1994 Steve Hanft-directed film Kill the Moonlight, which goes "I’m a driver/I’m a winner/Things are gonna change, I can feel it". Hanft and Beck were friends, and Hanft would go on to direct several music videos for Beck, including the video for "Loser". Referred to as a "stoner rap" by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the lyrics are mostly nonsensical. The song's chorus, in which Beck sings the lines "Soy un perdedor/I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?", is often interpreted as a parody of Generation X's "slacker" culture. Beck has denied the validity of this meaning, instead saying that the chorus is simply about his