Eminem’s Iconic ‘Stan’ Performance with Elton John at the 2001 Grammy Awards: A Game-Changing Moment in Hip-Hop History
Coming off the success of his massively successful diamond-certified album, The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem was by far one of the most polarizing figures in the music industry. A result of his maverick attitude, dark song content and perhaps what caused him to receive the brunt of the vitriol hurled his way; the perception was that the Detroit rhymer was homophobic.
Many organizations took issue with what they perceived to be homophobic lyrics by Eminem, with The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) being at the forefront of this crusade against him. GLAAD picketed in front of the Staples Center, where the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards were being held in 2001, urging people to boycott Em as a result of their assertion that his lyrics incite violence against homosexuals. This is what made the performance with Elton John, one of the preeminent celebrities in the gay community, all the more unexpected.
Eminem started out the song rapping his verse on a darkened stage, with a light shining only on himself. When it came time for the chorus, the entire world was sent into a frenzy when everyone realized who was singing. Elton John sang Dido’s chorus on the song while playing keyboard. At the end of the performance, Elton John and Eminem came together onstage, hugged, then held hands together and raised them in solidarity, effectively ending all speculation that Eminem was a homophobe.
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This performance is still regarded as one of the most important performances in hip-hop history and sent shockwaves throughout the music community, and subsequently, the entire world. Twenty-two years ago, this Grammy performance showed the entire world that hip-hop, notorious for its homophobia within the genre, could make strides towards acceptance of everybody, regardless of sexual orientation.
Watch Eminem and Elton John Perform “Stan” at the 2001 Grammy Awards Below
See 50 Facts About Eminem
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“My Name Is” was the first song Em recorded with Dr. Dre.
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The lauded MC is very familiar with being on the winning end of Grammy Awards nominations. He has won 15 gramophones over the course of his career.
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Eminem is the only rapper with two diamond-certified albums. His 2000 album, The Marshall Mathers LP, and his 2002 effort, The Eminem Show, were both certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) after selling 10 million copies each. Eminem is the only rapper to do this.
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You never know when inspiration will strike. That much is made clear by the fact that Eminem concocted his legendary alter ego Slim Shady while he was sitting on a toilet.
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The Detroit rapper took a by-any-means approach when it came to getting his daughter to play herself on “’97 Bonnie and Clyde,” a song with a fictional story about Em killing his then-wife Kim Mathers. In order to get Hailie on the song, Em told Kim he was taking her to Chuck E. Cheese.
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Eminem’s reputation as a near-peerless battle rapper is widely known, but even he’s taken an L before. He came in second place at a battle rapping competition at the 1997 Rap Olympics. Even though he lost, his appearance led to an Interscope intern, who was in attendance for the battle, to ask Em for his demo tape. The tape eventually made its way into the hands of Interscope label head Jimmy Iovine, who in turn gave it to Dr. Dre, who signed Em to his Aftermath Entertainment label in 1998.
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“Renegade” was originally an Eminem song featuring Royce 5’9″. As the story goes, Em had linked up with Jay-Z for a studio session as Hov was putting togetherThe Blueprint album. Unfortunately—or fortunately for the fans—Em left the beat he’d originally intended to give Hov back in L.A., so he gave Jay the beat for “Renegade” instead. The rest, as they say, is history.
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Eminem was originally supposed to play Jake Gyllenhaal’s role in the 2015 movie Southpaw. The project was announced in December of 2010, but by December of 2012, Em had to delay his role in the film so he could focus on music. By May of 2014, Em had dropped out all together.
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In 2020, Em rattled off a list of his favorite rappers. He named Lil Wayne, Tupac Shakur, Jay-Z, Redman, Treach, Kool G. Rap, The Notorious B.I.G., Kxng Crooked, LL Cool J, Nas, Joyner Lucas, Kendrick Lamar, André 3000, Rakim and Big Daddy Kane.
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8 Mile wasn’t the first time Eminem was in a movie. Back in 2001, he appeared in The Wash, starring Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. For the film, Em plays the role of a former car wash manager named Chris, who’s out for revenge.
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Eminem has always been a big fan of comic books, and back in 2009, XXL teamed up with Marvel Comics to release a special comic in which Eminem appeared alongside The Punisher.
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Before he spelled his name Eminem, Slim Shady rapped under the name M&M—like the candy. The M&M part stands for his government name, Marshall Mathers.
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When he was recording music in 2001 and 2002, Eminem used to sometimes have his daughter Hailie with him in the studio. He had coloring books and video games in the studio with him so she wasn’t bored.
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The first song Eminem ever collaborated with 50 Cent on was called “Places to Go,” featured on the 8 Mile soundtrack. Em doesn’t rap on the song, but he did produce the beat.
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Slim Shady’s The Marshall Mathers LP sold 1.78 million copies in its first week of release. That is the best first-week sales total for any rap album ever.
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Neill Blomkamp, who directed the 2013 Matt Damon-starring sci-fi film Elysium, had originally asked Eminem to take on the lead role in the film. Em was reportedly only interested in the role if the movie could be filmed in Detroit rather than Los Angeles.
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The Billboard Hot 100 chart is a place Eminem’s intimately familiar with. During his career, Em has earned five No. 1 singles on the Hot 100 (“Lose Yourself,” “Not Afraid,” “Love the Way You Lie” featuring Rihanna, “The Monster” featuring Rihanna and “Crack a Bottle” featuring Dr. Dre and 50 Cent). He also has 22 songs that landed in the Hot 100 top 10, and 89 songs on the Hot 100 overall.
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While he may not be a professional boxer, if given the chance, Em might be able to hold his own. According to boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya, whose trainer Emanuel Steward also trained Em, Eminem is someone that can actually fight.
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Eminem’s first-ever major label single (and the video for it) was “Just Don’t Give a Fuck,” a song that was on both his Slim Shady EP and his subsequently released The Slim Shady LP.
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Marshall Mathers has admitted that he slept through the moment his song “Lose Yourself” won the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 2003 Academy Awards. He says he didn’t think he had any shot of winning—he thought he might be competing with some actors for an acting award—so he didn’t bother watching.
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“Sing for the Moment” was the first song Eminem recorded for The Eminem Show album. “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” was the second.
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Dr. Dre and Eminem did ecstasy while recording some songs for Eminem’s 1999 major label debut album, The Slim Shady LP.
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Before there was the Recovery album, there was Relapse 2, the would-be sequel to his 2009 album, Relapse. After the rapper got into recording for Relapse 2, Em realized that he’d gone in a different thematic direction, so he scrapped that and went with Recovery instead.
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In 1981, Eminem was introduced to the first rap song he would hear. The track he heard is Ice-T’s “Reckless,” and it was played for him by Em’s uncle Ronnie.
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The Marshall Mathers LP was almost titled something completely different. According to a 2000 profile for Spin, Em originally planned to title his sophomore LP Amsterdam. The reason was that the Netherlands capital was a major ecstasy-production hub and Dutch journalists bugged him with questions that were so frustrating he wrote four songs about them on his flight home.
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All of Eminem’s major label studio albums have gone gold or better.
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During his career, Eminem has sold over 100 million albums worldwide.
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“The Real Slim Shady” wasn’t originally supposed to be on The Marshall Mathers LP. Interscope Records’ Jimmy Iovine wanted Em to create a single introducing himself again, so Em recorded “The Real Slim Shady” just hours before his album was due to be turned in. “Who Knew” was supposed to be the first single.
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“Lose Yourself,” which was Eminem’s first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, was a song Em wrote and recorded while on break from shooting 8 Mile.
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Em’s got plaques for days. He’s got 10 singles that have been certified platinum, including “The Way I Am,” “Superman” and more. He’s got many more singles that are certified platinum several times.
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When Eminem asks the sound engineer where his snare is at the beginning of “Cleanin’ Out My Closet,” he’s not saying it to sound cool; he really wanted to know what happened. In 2017, he revealed that the snare on the instrumental had really been muted, so that’s why he’s asking the engineer what’s up.
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Back in 2018, Eminem revealed that his favorite diss track of all time was Tupac Shakur’s “Hit ‘Em Up,” which is a scathing diss directed at The Notorious B.I.G. and Bad Boy Records.
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Beginning with his major label debut album, The Slim Shady LP, Em has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for all of his solo LPs.
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Most rappers would be satisfied adding slang to UrbanDictionary.com, but Eminem’s managed to get them added to two actual dictionaries. In 2017, the word Stan—a name and term used to describe an obsessive fan like the one Em describes in his 2000 song “Stan”—was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. In 2019, it was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
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Eminem used to sneak into a neighboring high school’s cafeteria in order to jump into freestyle rap battles.
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Eminem dedicated his Music to Be Murdered By album to Juice Wrld, who died of an accidental drug overdose on Dec. 8, 2019. Juice appeared with Em on the song “Godzilla,” which is on the album. The video for the track is also a dedication to Juice.
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Back in 2017, Em won a lawsuit against the National Party of New Zealand after they breached the copyright of his song “Lose Yourself.” A rep for Em said the rapper would donate the $500,000 he received in the lawsuit to support relief efforts for Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma.
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Eminem was lucky enough to have Dr. Dre pay attention to a cassette tape of his early recordings. Dre said that before Eminem, he’d never discovered anyone worthwhile by listening to their demo tape. In Dre’s own words, he ended up “betting all the marbles on Eminem.”
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Em’s definitely got a solid charity streak. At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic this past April, Em had cups of spaghetti donated to healthcare workers in his hometown of Detroit. Of course, the spaghetti part is a reference to lyrics from his iconic 2002 song “Lose Yourself.”
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Fat Joe says that Eminem tried to give him a demo tape six times, but Joe never listened. Ironically, years later, Fat Joe claimed that Em tried to talk him out of rap retirement.
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Em’s always been a huge fan of the Beastie Boys. As a tribute to the group, he patterned his Kamikaze album cover after their License to Ill album cover.
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He recorded The Eminem Show album while he filmed 8 Mile. Em filmed the movie in September of 2001.
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Back in 2019, it was reported that Eminem’s master recordings were lost in a fire at Universal Studios’ Hollywood archive building. Luckily for him, though, his team digitized the masters so they weren’t lost.
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It’s no secret that Em has respect for Tupac Shakur. However, few people realize the extent. In 2020, Em actually called ’Pac the greatest songwriter of all time. Hefty praise, but game recognize game.
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Eminem’s fourth major label album, The Eminem Show, features a title that was inspired by the 1998 Jim Carrey movie, The Truman Show.
When you’ve been rapping for over 30 years, you’re bound to forget your lyrics from time to time. So it was understandable—and also a little shocking—when Eminem admitted that he sometimes has to Google his own lyrics to make sure he’s not repeating rhymes.
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Em’s never held his tongue for anyone, and that’s resulted in some interesting consequences to say the least. Back in 2018, the United States Secret Service interviewed Eminem over his lyrics on “Framed,” a song that finds Em jokingly implying that he murdered President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump.
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Before he ever released his own major label music video, Eminem appeared as an extra in a music video for “Got the Life,” a 1998 song from rock group Korn.
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According to Ed Sheeran, Eminem once had Kendrick Lamar come to the studio to record a song all by himself in order to prove that he didn’t use ghostwriters.
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Em was such a big Tupac fan that he asked ’Pac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, if she could produce an album for the late rapper. That project ended up being Loyal to the Game.
