A loose narrative exposed over the course of several albums -- records like 's Riddle Box and 's The Amazing Jeckel Brothers -- was presented as different "joker's cards," culminating with the spiritual reveal of 's The Wraith: Shangri-La. After combusting in , the only members left, Violent J born Joseph Bruce and Shaggy 2 Dope born Joseph Utsler , slightly altered their name to reflect the fact that they had been visited by the Carnival Spirit, who ordered them to carry word of the impending apocalypse by touring the nation and releasing six "joker cards" popularly known as LPs with successive revelations of the final judgment.
The first, Carnival of Carnage , appeared in on their own Psychopathic Records label. The group became notorious in Detroit's underground scene, but several tours around the region failed to ignite much more than the rage of community leaders. Just one year later, Hollywood Records gambled on the band and spent more than a million dollars while ICP recorded their new album, The Great Milenko. On the day of its release in , however, Hollywood pulled the record, citing obscene lyrics and gruesome content -- possibly a move by its owner, Disney, to deflect criticism of its practices by the Southern Baptist Federation.
In a bizarre twist, yet another major label, Island Records, stepped in to release the album and capitalize on ICP 's notoriety, which continued to increase thanks to several incidents that kept them in the headlines: J was arrested after clubbing an audience member with his microphone in late , and shortly thereafter, the group's tour bus ran off the road, leaving J with a concussion. Next, the group and its entourage were involved in a brawl at a Waffle House in Indiana, and both members eventually pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct charges.
All the chaos took its toll, as J suffered a panic attack in April while on-stage in Minnesota. However, all of the publicity helped expand the group's cult following to the point where their next album, the concept record The Amazing Jeckel Brothers , debuted in the Top Five.
As evidenced by the numerous different collectible covers for The Amazing Jeckel Brothers , ICP had become a virtual merchandising machine, complete with comic books to flesh out their elaborate Dark Carnival mythology. They also wrote and starred in their own straight-to-video movie, Big Money Hustlas , and made guest appearances at wrestling events.
The group spent the summer of bickering with various tourmates Coal Chamber in particular and played at the ill-fated Woodstock ' Early in , Shaggy collapsed on-stage, but the cause was deemed to be nothing more than a combination of the flu and low blood sugar; however, while staging a wrestling event several months later, Shaggy fell off a steel cage, breaking his nose and cheekbone. Still, ICP managed to make it into the studio to record a follow-up album, and Big Money Hustlas was finally released.
In the , the first Gathering of the Juggalos festival took place in Novi, Michigan. Thousands of juggalos flocked to the event even at its beginnings, and it would grow to become an annual summit for fans of the band and participants in the strange subculture that was the juggalo.
By , attendance at the gatherings was in the tens of thousands. For years, ICP operated on the fringes of the record business, selling just enough discs to get the media's attention, however unfavorable.
For a good decade or so, most of the mainstream world basically stopped paying attention to Insane Clown Posse, and the group went underground. That is, until last spring, when the men behind ICP did something so strange, so offensive, the rest of the world couldn't help but take notice: They got deep. In April, the group released a music video for a piano-plinking, synth-heavy song called " Miracles.
Lyrically, there's not a single chopped-up hillbilly or chatty STD to be found; instead, the group praises the mysteries of earth, from the sun to Niagara Falls to giraffes. Though Bruce and Utsler had conceived "Miracles" as an earnest and fairly straightforward ode to the natural world, blog commentators and YouTube pundits were unsure of the song's meaning: Did these guys really not know how magnetism works?
Answer: They do. Why do they view rivers and giraffes with such f-bombing fascination? Because giraffes are cool. And, most important: Is this all one big joke? Definitely not. The attention lavished on "Miracles" was largely negative, but it was enough to propel ICP up from the underground—and the duo didn't come alone.
Over the past decade, Bruce and Utsler have quietly built a massive pop-culture sleeper cell of fans, who call themselves the Juggalos so named for a ICP song, "The Juggla". While most of us happily ignored ICP, the Juggalos embraced the band's outsider status, helping albums like 's Bang! Over the years, in fact, ICP has sold a respectable 7 million albums.
And that's just the beginning. Juggalos also flock to ICP's long-running online store, which sells everything from action figures to baby gear to an energy drink, Spazmatic. There are ICP movies, radio shows, and an annual music-festival-slash-brand-enhancer, the Gathering of the Juggalos. The uproar over "Miracles" only increased the devotion of ICP's fans. The group long ago developed a sort of symbiotic relationship with the outside world: The more Bruce and Utsler are shunted to the margins—whether by critics, labels, or kvetchy bloggers—the more their outcast fans love them.
While the record industry has haplessly searched for a new business model, Insane Clown Posse has built a veritable empire. Many of ICP's wisest moves were things that once looked like career killers: hanging out with fans while snubbing industry types, starting a niche music festival in the middle of nowhere, and, in Bruce's case, writing a lengthy, soul-baring memoir filled with unpleasant details called Behind the Paint.
Long before MySpace and Twitter allowed artists to communicate quasi intimately with their fan base and "transparency" had become a marketing strategy, ICP had already erased the barrier between performer and audience. In doing so, Bruce and Utsler discovered a formula for success in the Internet age that the larger music world is only now waking up to: Build close relationships with fans, develop ancillary profit streams, keep production and promotion costs down, turn every concert and album into an event even if that requires industrial soda sprayers , and, most of all, do everything yourself.
Bruce and Utsler, in other words, have become two bona fide 21st-century music magnates. Psychopathic Records' headquarters is located in an industrial suburban neighborhood just off Detroit's Nine Mile Road , surrounded by strip malls, warehouses, and a Montessori school. The interior looks like a late -'70s porn set—deep blue wall-to-wall carpeting, chocolate brown decor, a minimum of natural light—and the hallways are covered with posters and cardboard cutouts featuring other ICP acts, each with its own backstory and aesthetic, from serial-killer rap Twiztid to gangsta- zombie rap Blaze Ya Dead Homie to southern-gothic rap Boondox.
On the afternoon I arrive, Bruce gives me a tour of the facilities dressed in a red jersey, denim shorts, and a thick necklace featuring the Hatchetman, the group's cleaver-wielding logo. Without the clown makeup, his facial scruff and sunken eyes are more pronounced. ICP has had little contact with the corporate music world since it set up this nerve center. With the exception of physical distribution, everything's done in-house by a staff of about 30 full-time employees. There's the 6,square-foot warehouse; an Internet-radio station, W-FUCKOFF; a recording studio; and a setup for video shoots and concert rehearsals all of the resources are shared by the Psychopathic roster, which consists of more than a dozen artists on two labels.
A second warehouse, located just a short drive away, manufactures hats, belts, shirts, stickers, onesies, and all manner of other gear, though half the building will soon be turned over to a new wrestling school Bruce and Utsler are cofounding. Perhaps the biggest surprise in Psychopathic HQ is the number of gold and platinum albums hanging on the walls.
Even in the era of illegal downloads, ICP's fans still buy physical discs, which are stacked around the warehouse. This is partly because the CD packages are jammed with swag, like 3-D glasses and decoding devices. But it's also because ICP has made its albums must-haves for fans by weaving everything from the lyrics to the liner notes into a sprawling, wiki-ready supernatural epic called the Dark Carnival.
It's like the Lost universe, only with organ music and evil jugglers. A convoluted morality tale that purports to document and punish mankind's basest desires, the Dark Carnival forms the crux of ICP's comic book mythology. Its origins can be traced to an incident that befell Bruce in the early '90s, a story he relates in Behind the Paint.
According to Bruce, who says he's experienced several otherworldly visions in his life, a "dark shadow" appeared in the hall outside his room one night. After dropping a series of cards, the figure transported Bruce to a late-night carnival. Inspired by the encounter, ICP announced it would release six "Joker's Card" albums, each one spotlighting a different carnival character.
For newcomers, divining the specifics of the Dark Carnival plot can be tricky: The music rarely strays from ICP's worn formula of righteous violence and sixth-grade sex brags, and whatever plot points these songs contain are either dog-whistle faint or nonexistent. Yet the Carnival's inscrutability has only drawn fans deeper, and its long-form arc was seemingly made for the Internet, where Juggalos devote entire websites to the Dark Carnival, looking for clues in ICP's steady stream of blog posts.
Whether one sees the Carnival as a feat of protost-century storytelling or simply a long-con gimmick—in truth it's probably both—it's proven to be an inexhaustible franchise.
Not surprisingly, after the first series of cards was exhausted—a process that took six albums and 10 years—ICP announced the beginning of a second Joker's Deck. For those who'd been paying attention to the Dark Carnival all along, the thinly veiled spirituality of "Miracles" made perfect sense.
What do we want to say? A flicker of hope bursts into flame. And in this flash of light and Summertime is almost here and things in the Juggalo world are heating up with the devastating flavor of Loons and Goons of the Red Moon If you Yum Yum's Lure Available Now! The time has come, Juggalos! Yum Yum's Lure is in the air, spreading her enchanting powers of darkness throughout the known universe and Can you believe it homies!?
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