Remember when Eminem was only a rapper? it was just a few years ago. But since then, his records, videos and movie debut have made him . . . what, exactly? If you're looking for a precedent, you may find yourself fumbling with hypotheticals. What if Kurt Cobain had been a movie star? What if Madonna were a virtuoso? What if Tupac Shakur had been twice as popular -- and blond?

It's not just a matter of numbers, although numbers matter. Eminem has sold 20 million albums, making him the top-selling rapper ever. At a time when most stars aren't selling what they used to, he remains the only sure bet in the music industry. The Eminem Show was the best-selling CD of 2002, 8 Mile brought in more than $51 million in U.S. theaters, and its soundtrack moved 4 million copies. Even his business is booming; the year's most popular act, 50 Cent, is signed to Eminem's Shady Records.

It's partly a matter of skills; Eminem can rap circles around the competition. But it's also a matter of sensibility. Eminem is an extremist by inclination, but he also has a knack for triangulation, an ability to find a midpoint between seemingly contradictory impulses. His style is all hip-hop swagger and hard-rock self-loathing (can we call him the original angsta?), and he knows how to court pop fans by insulting them. In "Soldier," when he declares, "Never was a thug, just infatuated with guns," he is simultaneously asserting his hip-hop credentials and disavowing them.

Then there are the family ties. The rapper who raps like an angry kid is also a thirty-year-old divorced father of one, and Eminem is always reminding us how much he hates his mother and loves his daughter. If his songs sometimes sound like dinner-table monologues, that only heightens his appeal to disaffected kids who -- as he likes to say -- dress like him, act like him and feel like him. Eminem explains how it all works in "Sing for the Moment," where he imagines a parent's nightmare:

Walking around with his
headphones blaring

Alone in his own zone,
cold and he don't care

He's a problem child, what
bothers him all comes out

When he talks about his fucking dad walking out

'Cause he hates him so bad
that he blocks him out

But if he ever saw him again,
he'd probably knock him out

His thoughts are whacked, he's
mad so he's talking back

Talking black, brainwashed from
rock and rap.