Omnipresent by the time you read this, and still the finest track off his coruscating 'The Marshall Mathers LP' opus, over-familiarity cannot dull the mesmerising power of Eminem's dissection of the artist/fan interface. Right now, this is the definitive statement on the whole modern, post-Diana malaise of celeb culture - and crucially it's built around louche twilight beats and a hypnotically haunting sample from Dido's 'Thank You' (the effect of which is rather ruined when you hear the whole of her song and discover it sounds just like The Corrs).
And while he acts dumb and petulant for MTV, the complex psychological rendering of Stan, and Mathers' gloriously elastic way with words - that explosive, slangy poetry which manages to force seemingly natural rhymes out of phrases that bear no relation to each other - just confirms Eminem as the finest lyricist of his generation, and America's most vital satirist since Bill Hicks.
Send this to Number One for the next few weeks, and we'll be afforded the fantastic experience of having a thrillingly intelligent, brutally disturbing fucking RAP SONG blaring out at us on the Christmas Day Top Of The Pops, instead of Satan's own neutered emissaries Westlife and their latest mind-atrophying bland-o-rama. Christ, it's like 1958's Chrimbo battle between Lord Rockingham's XI and Conway Twitty all over again, innit?
Christian Ward
8.8
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