Paul Rosenberg, Eminem’s ex-manager, has said that the rapper’s merging together of ‘stalker’ and ‘fan’ into the word ‘stan’ on his 2000 Number One was a “happy coincidence”.
Fans have speculated for years whether the rapper deliberately created a new portmanteau word when he named the track. But speaking to the Independent ahead of a new documentary about obsessive fans called, inevitably, Stans, which he co-produced, Rosenberg insisted that wasn’t the case.
“It was just the name that rhymed with ‘fan’, and he just created it based on that,” he told the paper. “So that was a happy coincidence.”
Of course, since the song’s release the word is now an established part of the English language, to the point where has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, as both a noun and a verb.
“I didn't realise at the time how impactful (Stan) was going to be,” said Rosenberg. “And certainly didn't think 25 years later we'd be sitting here talking about a film we made based on the song.”
“When I first heard it, I felt like one of the most interesting things about it – especially back then in the pre-internet days, was (thinking that) people would for years question whether this was a real story, or parts of a real story.”
A six-minute short story, Stan tells the tale of an obsessive fan who keeps on writing to his idol, Eminem’s alter ego Slim Shady, without getting a reply. Based around a haunting sample from Dido’s Thank You, Stan becomes more and more unhinged to the point of tying his pregnant girlfriend up and driving off a bridge. A pivotal release for the rapper, it marks the point after which Eminem was taken seriously as an artist. It’s the song that non-fans, even those who care little for hip hop, admit is an astonishing piece of work.
Rosenberg said that the story was entirely fictional – there was no real life Stan. “What I didn't think about back then is just the vision that Marshall (Mathers, Eminem’s real name) had at such an early stage of his career to be able to write a story that was so perceptive about fandom – when he was really just sort of still getting started – and to do it in such a fantastically meta way. You know, this is a guy who is a star writing about fandom, but specifically writing about a fan of himself, right? Which was, you know, just so brilliant.”
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