Whoop Whoop, Juggalos MMFWCL lolz.
Ok, no, I actually don’t have that much enthusiasm for this group, but I do actually find them entertaining. How can I best describe their act? Imagine angry gangster rap, only with a fun dark theme to it. Many who hear of ICP are immediately put off by it. “What? Why are they clowns?” And I can’t blame them really… I mean how are you going to take 2 dudes with clown makeup seriously?
To that end, I say this: gangster rap is the same shit over and over again. I grow tired of hearing about “your bitches”, how much weed you smoke, how much you hate the police because they catch you doing shit you’re not supposed to be doing anyway (I’m not referring to the hate crimes police officers do… I’m referring to those who are engaging in organized violence, theft, drug dealing, and murder, and having the audacity to complain when the police are being unfair), how much you love having money, how much you love pussy, and how much bling you have (an obvious confession of how much of an idiot with money you are).
Not all gangster rap is the same… Tupac actually threw some really cool thought-provoking rhymes in. The one piece of this genre that does remain constant is the artist’s insistance that they’re dangerous, and “nobody better fuck with me!” They try to be hard and evil by rapping about shooting children, or strangling women, or killing small animals… This is where Insane Clown Posse differs.
Insane Clown Posse’s angle is to punish evil. There’s a whole mythos surrounding it all. They’re agents of a cleansing justice that has arrived in the form of a traveling carnival. At this carnival, everyone in town shows up to see it. They punish murderers, spouse and child abusers, greedy rich people (the only unethical person they attack, honestly, since not everyone who’s rich is greedy… there are actually a good number of them who earned their riches honestly, and practice and preach philanthropy all the time…), and racists. They create these carnival attractions that you’d normally find at a carnival, except they’ve been modified to torture and murder the evil people that they put on these rides and attractions. They all serve to entertain the good people as we all watch them suffer and die.
The first Insane Clown Posse song I ever heard was Halls of Illusions (For some reason youtube doesn’t have the official video with explicit lyrics…). The premise of the song is that they show you an illusion, then rip it down and show you the reality. The idea is that they’ll show you your family and people you’ve interacted with, all happy and living a good life without you in it. Then they rip it down and show you how your influence has ruined their lives. It forces you to answer for your crimes before you’re brutally murdered.
I think my favorite line in there was “You’re a fat fuckin’ drunk piece of shit!” I’ve heard plenty of rap songs that attack people, but not once did I ever feel it was justified. ICP isn’t attacking people just to prove how “hard” they are… They’re attacking people that deserve to be attacked.
Here’s another one that I so badly wanted to copy in real life: To Catch A Predator. The premise of this song is that they’re basically doing the same thing they do on dateline NBC’s “to catch a predator” story, but with a dark twist. Violent J poses as a little girl on the internet and lures pedophiles to his house, wherein he brutally murders them with much ecstatic enjoyment. “Soon enough, feds’ll be shuttin down my service, cuz people out there think they don’t deserve this. Until it’s your kid an old man’s finger-fuckin’, titty-suckin’, then you’ll want the knife stuck in!” Again, justified violence, because I personally think all pedophiles need to have their genitals mutilated on public TV for all to enjoy.
Now… about their method of delivery… Ok, yes, they’re extremely juvenile. “Imma pull ya nuts back and fling ‘em up ya butthole!” They say bad words a lot and talk about pussies, balls, and fucking sweaty fat women. They’ll rap about having bugs on your nuts, cunnilingus, fucking a beehive, fucking corpses… It’s extremely vulgar, but for some reason there’s a charm to it. I admit that this sort of thing is probably most appealing to 10-year-olds, but plenty of times listening through their albums I couldn’t help but start laughing at some of their lines.
This group isn’t about “how hard it is on the streets”, or “how rough we are”… it’s got an agenda. And on their 6th album, they revealed the true driving force behind their music is the bible. Granted, their delivery is ridiculously unorthodox, but the general idea is to punish the wicked and reward the good.
Something else I admire about them is the fact that they’re not central around negative ideas. There are plenty of positive messages throughout all their albums. Joe “Violent J” Bruce once said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that he’s always had a clear conscience with every album because while the negative exists, there’s plenty of positive messages in these songs. They’re always well-rounded that way, and it’s always important to preach that positive message.
The best examples of their positive songs are Pass Me By (a song about dying and how great the afterlife’s going to be), The Pendulum’s Promise (a song about karma), Miracles (the virally popular song about appreciating all the wondrous things about the world we live in), and Thy Unveiling (the song that unveils the “truth”, that all their songs are really teaching lessons from the bible in disguise).
Is ICP obnoxious? Are they disgusting? Are they immature? Yes. Yes to all. And yet, for some reason, I can’t help but be entertained by it. It’s not as bad as people make it sound.