RAB Rewind: Songs We Gave 10s, Vol. 4

September 24, 2025·1 hr 27 min·7 clips

Moulz gives Eminem's 'Stan' a perfect 10, revealing how the song's cautionary tale about fandom hit him personally.

1. Rap Rankings revisits Eminem's 'Stan' from The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) in its 'Songs We Gave 10s' episode format. 2. Two hosts co-host the episode — one gives Stan a 10 and the other a 9-minus, with both having previously awarded the song their highest scores. 3. The central evaluative question is whether a record so thoroughly canonized — where 'Stan' entered the dictionary — still earns those scores on its own artistic merit. 4. The 10-giving host argues that unlike 'Lose Yourself,' Stan is not a 'get-yourself-hyped-up record' and still hits emotionally because its cautionary tale about parasocial obsession is more relevant now than in 2000. 5. The 9-minus host attributes his deduction entirely to familiarity — the song has been 'played out' — but maintains it is still excellent and 'more relevant today' due to the growth of hysterical fan communities on social media. 6. Both hosts analyze the letter-format narrative device: Stan writes escalating letters to Eminem while the audience only hears Eminem's response at the very end, too late to save Stan. 7. They note the scribbling sound-effects embedded in the beat — one host says he didn't consciously register them until years after first hearing the song because he was 'so intently focused on the words.' 8. The hosts identify verse three as deserving a 'perfect verse alert,' citing the rain being mixed higher to match Stan driving with his girlfriend in the trunk and the Phil Collins 'In the Air of the Night' reference. 9. One host reads Eminem's firsthand account of a stoned engineer accidentally erasing the completed third-verse take, then responding to Eminem's anger with 'my bad, man, you want to hit this?' 10. The hosts debate whether the lost take was genuinely better or whether Eminem suffers from 'demo-itis' — the tendency to prefer a performance you can no longer recreate. 11. One host shares a personal story from 2012 in which his girlfriend noted he talked about rapper Charles Hamilton 'an alarming amount,' and he recognized the parallel to Stan's lyric 'my girlfriend's jealous because I think about you 24/7.' 12. The same host reveals that when Charles Hamilton was hospitalized, he mailed Hamilton CDs including a song called 'Hard Rock Cafe,' and Hamilton responded asking if the host was 'coming on to him' — echoing Stan's closing 'we should be together too.' 13. The hosts frame Stan as Eminem breaking kayfabe from the Slim Shady persona, saying this was 'the perfect way' to warn fans that his violent lyrics are fictional without undermining his commercial identity. 14. They play 'Thank You' by Dido — the sampled source — and conclude the producer Mark the 45 King highlighted the right elements, making this a case where they prefer the sample to the original. 15. They play Cam'ron's diss record also titled 'Stan,' recorded over the same beat and targeting Nas, which includes the line 'I hung out with you on Mother's Day / Because your mother's dead.' 16. One host calls Cam'ron's track 'one of the meanest diss records I've ever heard' and labels him 'the original line stepper in rap,' connecting it to Harlem's rap culture. 17. They briefly play Lil Wayne's 'Dear Anne' (produced by Swizz Beatz), described as a gender-reversed take on the Stan format with a female fan, noted as a Carter III-era leak. 18. The episode is conversational and discursive, with hosts frequently interrupting each other, playing audio clips, and going on tangents about music video budgets, Dido's real name (Florian Cloud de Bonneville O'Malley Armstrong), and CBS radio. 19. Hip-hop fans who care about Eminem's craft, the Marshall Mathers LP era, and how a song's cultural meaning evolves over two decades will find this most rewarding. 20. Listeners who want a concise track review rather than a wide-ranging two-host discussion with multiple audio tangents may find the format exhausting.

As heard by us

A sharp, funny look at a song that still earns its ten.

Rap Rankings treats Eminem's "Stan" as a record that already lives in the canon, with Dido folded into the credit and DJ Mark the 45 King named on production.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get the case for why "Stan" is a ten.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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