If you missed the one-weekend-only engagement of Eminem’s <em>Stans documentary in theaters, have no fear. Stans is already on its way to streaming. You’ll be able to watch the 102-minute glimpse into the world of the Detroit rapper’s fandom at home, starting August 26th via Paramount+. The streaming app also provides access to original programming, catalogs from CBS, MTV, and Nickelodeon, and access to live events like the VMAs for $7.99/month with ads or $12.99/month without ads, after a one-week free trial. You can find more info here.
Stans is named after Eminem’s 2000 single “Stan,” from his third studio album, The Marshall Mathers LP. Built around an interpolation of British singer Dido’s 1998 song “Thank You” from the Sliding Doors soundtrack, “Stan” tells the story of the titular, disturbed superfan from a first-person perspective in the format of a series of letters to Eminem. Over the course of three verses, Stan becomes increasingly unhinged by a lack of return correspondence from his hero, culminating in a murder-suicide at the end of the third verse. In a fourth verse, Eminem writes from his own perspective, as he finally gets to Stan’s letters and realizes he’s too late to curb the effects of the fan’s one-sided obsession.
The song, which reached No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100, became one of Eminem’s signature songs. More importantly, it gave us a term for the phenomenon of people engaging in parasocial relationships with celebrities after Nas turned the song’s title into an insult during his battle with Jay-Z. In his 2001 diss track “Ether,” Nas told Jay, “You a fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, a Stan,” officially marking the first use of the character to describe a real-life person with a delusional fixation on an entertainer.
Since then, online “Stans” — including those of Eminem himself — have engaged in wars of words with each other over which of their favorite stars are the best and bullying campaigns against critics who they perceive to have attacked their favs. Some celebrities even give these fan clubs fanciful nicknames, like Nicki Minaj’s Barbz or Beyoncé BeyHive, while the phenomenon has jumped to include musicians beyond hip-hop, like Swifties, Arianators, and Little Monsters. They’ve certainly helped ruin music journalism as a profession, but hey … at least they got a movie out of it.