In 2018, Universal Music issued a 'Locked N' Loaded - Limited Super Deluxe Edition' of Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite For Destruction, with an eye-watering $1000 price tag. Housed in a wooden box covered with vegan leather, the box set featured an exhaustive list of Gn'R ephemera - rings, guitar picks, a. bandana, replica ticket stubs, collectible coins - plus seven vinyl twelve inch records featuring the original albums, B-sides, early EPs, previously unreleased demo recordings and much more. One thing that was conspicuously missing from what was billed as a 'Holy Grail' for fans of the Los Angeles hard rock band was the most controversial song they ever recorded, One In A Million. In a summer 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, guitarist Slash stated the decision to omit the song was taken collectively, adding, "It didn’t take long. There wasn’t a big roundtable thing over it."
One In A Million was originally released on the band's G N' R Lies EP, which coupled the quintet's 1986 EP Live ?!★꩜ Like a Suicide , and four acoustic recordings, Patience, Used To Love Her, You're Crazy and One In A Million. Patience was released as a single, reaching number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it was the EP's closing track which garnered the most attention, as it featured some of the most objectionable lyrics ever released by any band on a major label. An account of Axl Rose's early experiences in Los Angeles after stepping off a Greyhound bus from Indiana, the song featured deeply offensive racist and homophobic slurs, with Rose railing against "immigrants", "faggots" and "n*****s".
At the time, Rose attempted to defend his use of the latter word by claiming that it "doesn't necessarily mean black" and also suggested that, if a rap group such as N.W.A. (featuring Ice Cube and Dr. Dre) were free to use the word, then he should be extended the same right.
