Has it really been 25 years since Eminem’s third album, The Marshall Mathers LP, was released? More importantly, how did this music that seemed almost untouchably transgressive then, even by hip-hop standards, become so popular that it’s now canonical? Stans, a new documentary by Steven Leckart that takes its name from the third single off that album, would seem to argue that almost as much credit is due to the fans as to the artist himself. Through a series of interviews with Eminem’s most ardent admirers and co-conspirators, who range from the unknown to the very much known—among them, Ed Sheehan, Carson Daly, LL Cool J, Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine, and Adam Sandler—the film charts Em’s turbulent career and shows how, like a Molotov cocktail hurled into the new millennium, he incensed parents and conservative pundits but flashed wildly before so many young eyes. The film isn’t just about the fans, though. The real Slim Shady discusses his writing process; the death of his best friend, Proof; and the existential effect hip-hop music has had on his life. A generation raised on sizzurp-soaked mumble rap might not be able to register how shocking Slim Shady’s perfectly enunciated, amphetamine-fueled rhymes were at the time, but perhaps they can understand this: the word “stan” comes from a song about a man who stuffs his pregnant girlfriend into a trunk before driving off a bridge. In 2017, it was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Fifty million Slim Shady fans can’t be wrong. —Nathan King