Insane Clown Posse

The lineage of this unintelligible, hatred proliferating, rap duo can be traced back to the otherwise quaint suburb of Oak Park, Detroit. Doing the only logical thing two, exuberant, young, sociopathic (but not in a cool way like DR. Cox from scrubs), kids could do, they started their very own localized backyard wrestling circuit. If you are unfamiliar with ICP, yet this scenario sounds vaguley familiar, you probably remember the two piss poor video-games that these early, misguided years spawned.

Boobs could convince me to purchase a monkey riddled with ebola.

I never bought this game though.

After, what many people consider as their more progressive, societaly forward thinking days, Shaggy and J decided to cut the whole physical violence charade, so they could really hone the craft of creating musical violence. Now, that's not to say that the subject matter in the songs they make consist of nothing but depraved, gratuitious violence (because sometimes they'll rap about the occluded notion that these fellas sex up women too), but more that forcing anyone to listen to these two's bafflingly simple rhymes can be considered an act of second degree assault in most federal court systems. This backwards step for artistry as a whole was taken in 1989, and since then, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope have never looked forward.

ICP's first album; entitled "Carnival of Carnage" was released late 1992. In one decisive review by allmusic, they were summarized as

"a third-rate Beastie Boys supported by a cut-rate Faith no More, all tempered with the sensibility that made Gwar cult heroes-only with [...] more sexism and jokes that [...] wind up sounding racist."

Put more eloquently, their entire nonsensical facade couldnt've represented how terrible they were more if the reflecting acronym stood for I Cant Perform. Inbetween this and their second full length album "Ringmaster," the associative term 'juggalo' was born. It all went down during a show, when violent J accidentaly mispronounced his own ebonicified mispronunciation of a word in conjunction with adressing a crowd (juggler to 'the juggla' to juggalo). Thus, the term was given wings. Now, making bad music and giving your fans their own term of referance has been done in the past, and alone doesnt exclude ICP from possibly being an intellectually stimulating group with something to offer. Before you decide to go see what all this todd macfarlaneified kiss cover band hooflaw is about though, you should know that as of 1994, Joe and Joe use every concert they perform at as an excuse to plug their favorite brand of backwater, offshoot, food stamp cola shamelessly, whilst spraying every person at the venue in it from head to foot.

So ICP is just like a very well lead-on practical joke against MY generation. Right?

I'll refer you to The Gathering: The annual psychopathic records music festival.

First, there's the large open acreage of land placed in what would normally be a homeley town, that every year gets proverbially assfucked by 5-20000 supporters. Despite the very cult-like notion of being 'one big hatchet loving, clown fetish eternalizing family drilled into their heads, patrons still have to shell out close to 100$ for a ticket to participate in said land assfuckery and about 5$ per bottle of water. Euphamisms of anal penetration aside, the music festival is reserved almost exclusively for members of Psychopathic records to perform, and there have been known instances of violence occuring when someone there doesn't contain, or call enough attention to his/her undying love to ICP. Occasionaly, when they feel the fanatical devotion waning, they'll let in other acts that have already made themselves into rap pariahs to the rest of the world (read: Vanilla Ice, Coolio, Afroman).

Therein lies a pivotal tactic to the success of ICP: if you're terrible at what you do, just find a bunch of like-minded tools of a lesser caliber to your toolishness and parade them in front of you untill the masses are desensitized to your toolshit. It's actually a very commonly used practice in the hip-hop industry, employed by such rap icons as Jay-z, Lil Wayne, and 50-cent.

dees cats is straight turrble yo'

In any case, The Gathering has been referanced as the Woodstock of our age, and a true acolade for juggalos throughout. In pertaining to that, I believe that the cultural torchpassing has been subtle, between the resurgance of hippies (in trustfund form), and juggalo's being the newest demographic to ironically throw around the word (non)conformist. The title of 'group of people that are so blatantly bat-shit loco, that it forces you to actually give some shits about their goings-on, due to a fascination of the groups full-blown retardation' I do believe, has changed....