Eminem is an undeniable master of wordplay, and thanks to his years and years of hard work, he’s helped create an entirely new term that recently made its way into the Oxford English dictionary. Recently, the publication revealed that they’ve added a brand new term to their tome, the word “stan.”
In their entry, they define a “stan” as, “An overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity.” For those unaware, the term originally came to prominence following the release of Eminem’s 2000 album The Marshall Mather LP which contained a song by that very name. In it, a super fan pens a letter to his rap hero who fails to respond in time, and he ends up driving his car off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk.
Since “Stan” hit, music fans, and hip-hop heads in particular, have taken to using the term to describe an individual who’s way into one specific artist, i.e., “You’re a total Kanye stan.” The Oxford English dictionary connotes the origin story in their entry, writing that the word comes from the, “Early 21st century: probably with allusion to the 2000 song ‘Stan’ by the American rapper Eminem, about an obsessed fan.”
So shout out to Emimen. The self-described “Rap God” has been manipulating words so long that it was almost inevitable he’d help to create an entirely new one.
