There weren't a lot of epistolary songs, especially epistolary rap songs, out in the world in 2000, and certainly none that were as popular as "Stan".
That is, the four verses are narrated through letters, three from Stan and one from Eminem. I knew, for instance, one of the most distinctive things about "Stan": it's epistolary. I was in middle school, I wasn't allowed to listen to Eminem, I didn't really pay a lot of attention to popular music at all at the time, and even I knew the basic gist of "Stan". And while that doesn't exactly look like the song of the summer on paper, this song was absolutely everywhere in 2000. Stan's level of attachment to Eminem is obviously unsettling, his mental state deteriorates sharply after repeatedly getting blanked by his favorite rapper, and he eventually loses his mind, murders his pregnant girlfriend, and kills himself by driving off a bridge. See, "Stan" is the story of a fictional Eminem fan who writes multiple letters to Eminem but receives no response ("Dear Slim, I wrote you but you still ain't callin'.").
"Stan" is one of the most acclaimed tracks by one of the best-selling and most awarded rappers of all time - it's probably Eminem's second-most beloved track after "Lose Yourself" - so yeah of course it inspired its own slang term that people still use today when they say "I stan this" to mean "I love this particular piece of culture so much I will murder innocent people, including children, over it". It was a massive single off of a massive Grammy-winning diamond-certified album, it was on top of the charts in multiple countries, and was one of Eminem's moments of peak cultural ubiquity - he has had several throughout his career - as it kicked off a decade where he would become the single best-selling artist in any genre, a feat that was especially impressive as he spent half of that decade recovering from addiction and not putting any music out at all.
"Stan", the word, is from "Stan", the song, as in the 2000 single by Eminem with a hook by Dido (hey remember Dido?).
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