

Īllmusic's Jason Birchmeier said that the song is "on a par with those featured on the band's recent (and magnificent) Dirt album." Ned Raggett of Allmusic said that the song "isn't bad at all but on the flipside has little immediate surprise to offer to it." Music video 19 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. "What the Hell Have I" was released to radio stations on Jin support of Alice in Chains' appearance on the 1993 Lollapalooza tour. Toby's like a brother, he knows all our shit, all our personalities and we don't trust anybody unless we've got something on them. That's not to disrespect Andy, it's just that he wasn't there when they were being created. So I was happy to see Toby finish his work off with the remixes. This and "A Little Bitter" were mixed by Andy Wallace because Toby had a previous commitment, and they always bothered me because they were too "tinny" compared to our other stuff. In the liner notes of 1999's Music Bank box set collection, guitarist Jerry Cantrell said of the song: While experimenting with sounds, he adopted a guitar-sitar into the session to achieve the sound of the opening riff. Contrary to popular belief, Jerry Cantrell did not use a traditional sitar during the recording session although he did attempt to play one but was unsure how. The song was originally written for their breakthrough album Dirt, but was shelved at the time and used later for the Last Action Hero soundtrack. A remixed version of the song was included on the compilation albums Music Bank (1999) and The Essential Alice in Chains (2006). It was included on the compilation album Nothing Safe: Best of the Box (1999).

The song was released as a single and peaked at No. It was originally featured on the soundtrack to the 1993 John McTiernan film Last Action Hero starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. " What the Hell Have I" is a song by the American rock band Alice in Chains.
