Insane Clown Posse consist of two members: Joe Bruce (Violent J) and Joey Utsler (Shaggy 2 Dope).
At first, they did not start out as Insane Clown Posse, they started out as a gang known as Inner City Posse. As Inner City Posse, they came out with \"Basement Cuts\", which they had a local record store owner: Alex Abbis distribute. It only sold about 200 copies, and after this happened, Joe Bruce, Joey Utsler, and Alex Abbis, decided to create Psychopathic Records. After doing so, Psychopathic Records came out with \"Dog Beats\" in 1991, the last album that ICP would come out with under the name Inner City Posse.
This was also the same time that Joe Bruce, was getting out of County Jail, this was when he one day in 1991, had a revelation. He claims he was visited by spirits from the afterlife, which he said came to him in the form of a \"Dark Carnival\" of souls. The message was clear, and would be about all of their albums from then onward: \"There will be 6 faces of the Dark Carnival. After all 6 have risen, the end of time will consume us all.\" In simpler terms: its kind of like a story with 6 chapters, each chapter tellin a different part. After this, Bruce and Utsler, changed their rap style and persona, and started to dress as evil clowns to spread the prophecy of The Dark Carnival and they would tell the world of the tale of the 6 Jokers Cards.
In 1992, under the new name Insane Clown Posse, they released their first Jokers Card: Carnival of Carnage. The Album starts out with Violent J saying: \"It was a soft gentle night, in the little town of... of... well, your town. The gentle breeze swept the streets, creating that pleasant howl that these kind town folks have enjoyed for so many, many years. The wind chimes sent their peaceful melodies into the ears of the sleepy residents. But the unusual was approaching in the distance, something evil was heading towards this small town. As the residents slept, something crept, slithered and crawled it\'s way through the quiet streets. Guided by the moon light these frightening strangers set up tents and rides, shows and games: there were savage jesters, and wicked ringmasters, there were horrid freak shows, and sights only the impending doomed will witness...
They brung with them the carnage that they had lived with for eternity. The morning is a new day, the people of this town will unwillingly witness the show of their lives, only rumored to exist.
They will be the next to die helplessly at the Carnival of Carnage\"
The Carnival of Carnage told a story of the poor of the ghettos coming together to defeat the rich and wicked, united as a supernatural \"carnival\".
ICP found out after releasing their album, being under no record company, that they would have to self-promote themselves, considering it only sold 17 copies on its release. This number has been hidden on all of their albums. It has some kind of mysterious meaning behind it.
During the Carnival of Carnage Era, they released the 2nd Joker\'s Card: Ringmaster in 1994. They promoted this album by taking promotion to state-level and visited local schools and such, passing out samplers. Selling over 100,000 copies of Ringmaster, this brought ICP to Jive Records with a $60,000 contract.
Being signed to Jive Records, Insane Clown Posse released the 3rd Joker\'s Card: The Riddle Box in 1995. This is where some conflict breaks out between ICP and Jive. All Jive did was give ICP a dollar a copy and sold Riddlebox to the same 60,000 that bought Ringmaster. This made ICP infuriated. So they went back to self-promotion and took 3 buses, painted up as The Riddlbox, and threw a dart at a map, and wherever it landed, thats where they would go and promote themselves. The first dart landed on Dallas, Texas. While in Dallas, ICP scored some deals with some record stores and were able to sell 40,000 copies of Riddlebox, and they sold 60,000 copies in Detroit. ICP realized after this, that there was a demand for thier style of music, so they started calling their male fans Juggalos and their female fans Juggalettes.
After all this, Insane Clown Posse, wanted to be released from Jive and continue on with Pschopathic Records, but Jive wouldnt let them go, so thus, they couldn\'t release another Joker\'s Card, unless it was with Jive (who at all, did not promote Insane Clown Posse at all).
Hollywood Records had heard of the Insane Clown Posse and their dispute with Jive, and offered to pay off their contract, so that they would be free from them. But ICP found out that Hollywood Records was owned by Disney, and figured that they would not be able to put out the style of music that they wanted to. Hollywood Records assured ICP that Disney owned many companies and that they were all distinct in their own way.
Insane Clown Posse decided to go forward with Hollywood Records and release the 4th Joker\'s Card: The Great Milenko (who most today, think is their best work ever). With this album, more fans grew and ICP even made music videos for \"Hokus Pokus\", \"How Many Times\" and \"Halls of Illusions\", which MTV declined all three to be played on their channel.
The Great Milenko plays the part of a magician sideshow within the Dark Carnival, and he tricks his viewers into the acts of malice and greed - a necromancer of sorts, acting not on dead bodies but dead minds and hearts. Tracks such as \"Halls of Illusions\" illustrate beautifully the need to resist the temptation to do wrong at the expense of others, as in the song victims are taken through an illusionary exhibit of all the great things that might\'ve happened had they never gone about their wicked ways, before being dragged down to Hell. Other tracks such as \"Hokus Pokus\", \"House of Horrors\", \"Southwest Voodoo\", and \"Boogie Woogie Wu\" are standard clown fare, still evolving lyrically and musically, with catchy beats. Two songs stick out as being frontpieces for their existing fans, the Juggalos, \"What is a Juggalo?\" and \"Down with the Clown\", both promoting pride in supporting the band. \"How Many Times?\" is a more serious song, showing diversity of the group, and willingness to take the Joker\'s Cards into more serious social issues. A line from the song, for instance, attacks the failures of public schools.....
\"How many times did I walk in and just sit? And have to listen, and learn all this bullshit? Learning history and science, fucking wait. Knowing that, will that put food on my plate? Can I walk into McDonald\'s, up to the counter, and tell them you can make limestone from gunpowder? Will they give me a cheeseburger if I don\'t have shit? Fuck no, fuck you and shut your fucking lips.\"
In the final verse of \"Pass Me By\", there is a warning to the wicked that you\'re not going to see this granduer of heaven if you continue about your ways. In few other tracks of their career are ICP more obvious about the true intentions of their story than in The Great Milenko\'s \"Pass Me By\".
After \"The Great Milenko\" came out, Disney heard about what Hollywood Records was doing with ICP, and made Hollywood Records drop them.
After all this went down, record companies were jumping at their feet, trying to get the clowns to sign under them. Island Records happened to be the one that the clowns signed with. Under Island Records, ICP was able to finally get some air time on MTV. Island purchased an hour block on MTV in an auction and aired Shockumentary. This helped ICP get promoted a little more. Another thing happened during this time, that allowed the Insane Clown Posse get promoted more, and that was thier involvement with the WWF and WCW. With this brought more fans, but these weren\'t actual fans of their music, these were fans of them only because, they now were celebrities. ICP, being street-based and underground, told their true fans to inform the new fans or kick them out of the community.
After all this subsided, the Insane Clown Posse revealed the 5th Joker\'s Card: The Amazing Jeckel Brothers in 1999. With this album, the Insane Clown Posse reached #4 on the Billboard Charts, right under the Backstreet Boys.
Limited respect was forced out of the music industry, when ICP was invited to play Woodstock \'99, and Alternative Press featured ICP as their cover story - which became the best selling edition of AP ever. Insane Clown Posse brought up some new projects, such as the horrorcore duo Twiztid, and ICP began expanding to other avenues to promote themselves that didn\'t involve traditional methods such as: comic books, toy/clothing-based merchandising, the creation of a Juggalo wrestling promotion - JCW, and a full length feature film staring Psychopathic Records staff, \"Big Money Hustlas\" which featured such offbeat celebrities as Rudy Ray Moore (known better as black supercop \"Dolomite\"), The Jerky Boys, Harland Williams, wrestling legend Mick Foley, Fred \"Rerun\" Barry, and the Misfits.
ICP began having problems with Island, feeling the label didn\'t relate to ICP\'s plan of action, and wanted to get out of the contract with Island before releasing their final chapter to the Joker\'s Card saga. However, their contract with Island required a prerequisite number of albums before the group could be allowed an option out. So ICP put together compilation CD\'s and the double-album Bizaar/Bizzar combo to help satisfy the quota. While not part of the Joker\'s Card story, Bizaar/Bizzar served several purposes besides that of filling of the quota with Island. It had several songs reflecting changes in musical style, which would become foreshadowing for the final Joker\'s Card. The hit single on the double-album release was \"Let\'s Go All The Way\", a remake of an \'80s pop song by Sly Fox, with lyrics rewritten to fit the Carnival\'s wandering theme.
\"Let\'s Go All The Way\" became popular with radio, and ICP even filmed a music video for the song, which aired on MTV, igniting another scandal, this time outside the public eye. ICP\'s new music video was given little real chance by MTV executives, and only played at 5 AM in the morning - this was despite having no graphic language or sexually suggestive content. The video depicted a group of diverse races marching unified to paradise, but was deemed \"inappropriate\" by MTV executives. This decision to hold back the video came at a time when MTV was drawing ire from parent\'s groups who slammed on MTV\'s sex-driven pop icons and music videos - yet videos like ICP\'s \"Let\'s Go All The Way\" were kept on the 5 AM timeslot. There were even reports of parents coming to like ICP for it\'s positive message in \"Let\'s Go All The Way\", which made many Juggalo fans feel as though the group was \"selling out\". ICP lashed out hard against those that felt this way, and this incident created something of internal division, but the main group of dedicated fans appreciated the new exposure and stood by ICP. ICP\'s video was even put up for TRL voting, on a write-in basis. There were several incidents in Times Square with massive crowds of Juggalos being dispersed (sometimes by anti-riot police forces) before the live filming of MTV\'s TRL top ten show. TRL officials eventually barred ICP\'s video from eligibility, due to \"vote corruption\", claiming ICP\'s fans were cheating to get their high vote tallies in online write-in forms (despite this not seeming really possible). ICP\'s video was soon taken out of MTV rotation.
The Insane Clown Posse went into hiding for a little bit and produced a Supergroup cd with other artists signed under Psychopathic Records called \"Dark Lotus\".
Also during thier time of hiding, ICP created an annual 3-day event known as: The Gathering of the Juggalos, where thousands of ICP fans and the curious come in to attend events of all natures - games, movies, rides, shows, musical concerts leading out the day, and all sorts of festivities.
Some of the secrets had begun slipping out by this point. Each Joker\'s Card album was labelled \"Dedicated to the Butterfly\". Violent J explained this dedication, and it was reprinted with every copy of the Sixth Joker\'s Card. Here\'s the dedication explained as it was written in the booklet with the Sixth Joker\'s Card...
Violent J: \"I was maybe 7 years old. My brother Rob was around 8 or 9 I guess. We were outside playing in front of our house in suburban Berkley, MI. I remember it was a regular summer afternoon, we were hanging out in the yard or whatever when my brother Rob screamed \'Joe I caught a giant butterfly! Hurry up and get the jar!\' I grabbed the jar off the steps and ran over to him. Somehow, some way, he had actually managed to catch one of them big ass, pretty, orange, yellow and black butterflies right out of the air with his bare hands. Unbelievable. If you remember anything about being a kid, you remember them things are un-catchable. They\'ll fuckin\' sit there and dance, slow motion, in the air style, right around your fuckin\' face while you bust your ass trying to catch it. Somehow, on this regular summer afternoon, Rob happened to scoop it right out of flight with his bare hands. \'Hurry, get the jar opened up and ready, I can feel its wings trying to get away!\'
Finally we had it safely and sound in the jar with the fresh poked holes in the lid and everything. We knew that we\'d better let it go soon though. We looked at this creature as an animal more than an insect. Plus being that age, this animal was more than just a bug to us. It was our homie. We decided we would just have it spend one night with us and we\'d let it go in the morning. Plus we figured a whole family of giant butterflies might even come looking for it if we didn\'t. I mean this butterfly was so big, and colorful in that jar. It even looked like it had fur on it. It was absolutely awesome.
That night, as usual it was hot as hell in our bed room, so we took the fan and pointed it right into the holes of the butterfly\'s jar. We didn\'t think much of it at the time other than hopefully the butterfly will be comfortable while he\'s spending this night with us.
The following morning, much, much, to our sadness, the Butterfly was dead. Our guess was it had to be the fan blowing on it all night. We didn\'t mean to harm this beautiful, giant Butterfly at all. We were painfully crushed.
We had a funeral right there in our backyard for it that morning. We buried it in this lil\' empty box on top of some napkins and stuff. As we were paying our last respects to this butterfly, both me and my brother Rob made a vow - right then and there we made this vow: \"One day, we will both make it to Heaven and apologize to the Butterfly, face to face.\"
We made that vow when we were just two lil\' young-ass kids, but what better time than then? That was us at our cleanest and purest form. We were so loving, only because were were still so untouched and unscatched by the real world. That yard was the only world we knew back then. We didn\'t know any real negatives, or realties even, because they are kept from most young children. We were at our cleanest points that morning. Ready for the world with our first vow and goal to complete in life.
We didn\'t know the differences between white, black or Asian people, boys or girls, east sidaz or west sidaz, Jewish or Muslim people. None of that shit mattered to us then, and it still shouldn\'t. We just looked for smiling faces back then, and we still should.
Look at us all now. It was the world around us that instilled all the hatred and wacky beliefs upon us all. We become one with the world as we walked through it. Once we live some life, our souls ain\'t as clean anymore. We all got a lil\' bit older, we didn\'t care as much anymore about butterflies or what colors their wings had. We learned who we are supposed to hate, who we should love and even flat out how we should be as people. All of which is taught to us by other people! And who the fuck are they? We spend our entire lives trying not to do what ever is considered \"stale\" by everybody else. Well fuck that! Consider us stale as fuck then. We some four-week-old, desert-dried-Wonder-Bread, stale-ass individuals then.
We will one day complete our vows before we pass. I want to be as clean as I was when I was 7. I want my own heart telling me what to do and how to live. We will rid our souls of this garbage that was pounded into it, and once again respect the beauty of some fresh ass shit like a Butterfly\'s wings. One day, we will get to Heaven and apologize to the Butterfly, just like we said we would. We\'re going to Shangri-La, baby. Sorry if that upsets you... wait, no we ain\'t! Fuck off if that upsets you. The bottom line is we want nothing more out of the rest of our lives but to see you Juggalos there in Shangri-La with us.\"
The Butterfly was one of the most speculated aspects of the first 5 eras of Joker\'s Cards. Once it was explained, what did it mean? In fact, what were all the 5 stories leading to? ICP went into hiding for 8 months, and planned the next course of action. After a long period of silence, during the 2002 annual \"Gathering of the Juggalos\", ICP finally came out with a new look, ready to reveal everything in the Sixth and Final Joker\'s Card.
ICP let go of Island Records and went fully under their own Psychopathic Records, and produced the final 6th Joker\'s Card: The Wraith: Shangri-La in 2002. But the final Joker\'s card would not be in one cd, it would be in two. It came in Deaths exhibit of Shangri-La and Hell\'s Pit.
The first album of the two-part story was released November 5th, 2002. \"The Wraith: Shangri-La\" capitalized on the history of the clowns, openly touching on why ICP used the violent rap style (which the band calls \"The Wicked Shit\"), and how it was used to relay a bigger message to the fans. Some of the tracks of Shangri-La illuminate the beauty and granduer of heaven, most noteably \"It Rains Diamonds\", where the chorus proclaims:
\"It Rains Diamonds nightly, in my Shangri-La lit brightly. Who can miss this so inviting? Come stand on mountain-tops and Yell! [...] Diamonds drift upon the mist of forgetfulness, bringing a peace untold as I fade away to become what my eyes see - see into the eternity, of Shangri-La.\"
The finale of \"The Wraith: Shangri-La\" is it\'s last track, the mysterious track 17 (17 appears in ICP albums throughout their history, as I explained earlier, and has been the source of speculation amongst Juggalos for years). This track, \"The Unveiling\" says it\'s time to come clean about the prophecy and story of the Dark Carnival, they say there\'s no more need for reverse talking, subliminal messages or the riddles the group is so famous for. \"The Unveiling\" lives up to it\'s name by having ICP finally explain their own gimmick, and the importance of the story behind it. They explain in this simple song about how they used their trademark vulgar music (the \"Wicked Shit\", it\'s what they mean when talking about the \"Hatchet\" below) as a way to dress up a story of moralisticly religious overtones - that constant theme of the judgement that the Joker\'s Cards were based on. It all started with riddles and hints in \"Carnival of Carnage\" and worked it\'s way up to the more obvious themes displayed in \"The Wraith\". For some fans this was a surprise, for others they had seen it coming, but for mainstream publications it came as a total shock. All parties seemed to embrace the bold declaration, as critics this time around have been fairly positive for reviews of Shangri-La.
Here are the lyrics for the final song, so you can read them and come to your own conclusion:
\"Now we\'ve been told this carnival shit has touched on many lives. People have fucking sworn to us, they too can feel it inside. What is it that draws you in, this magic that compels you? We\'ve been waiting six fucking Joker\'s Cards to finally tell you. The messages and hints were there - although most never picked up on them. We snuck \'em in subliminally, with that \'wicked shit\' around them. We mentioned more and more of this on every Joker\'s Card, the bottom line always the same, you ain\'t have to look hard.
We wickedly kick it, inflict it, you get it; get wit\' it, and dig, we don\'t preach it flat out. Some ninjas don\'t wanna get with ya, they quick to forget ya, without the Hatchet, and get out. So we rose the Hatchet do or die, now Juggalo\'s standing tall. After all Six have risen the end of time will consume us all.
It ain\'t got nothing to do with us. It ain\'t Psychopathic Records. All we\'re doing is pointing shit out to you, we in this together. Who\'s behind the Dark Carnival, the Gatherings and the Hatchet? Who\'s behind Dark Lotus, the Circus and everybody at it? Who invented Juggalos and Juggalettes and fucking Faygo showers? What about that feeling you get when bumping our shit, who\'s behind the Juggalo powers? This ain\'t no fucking fan club, it ain\'t about making a buck. Don\'t buy our fucking action figures bitch, I don\'t give a fuck! It ain\'t about Violent J or Shaggy, the Butterfly or 17. When we speak of \'Shangri-La\', what you think we mean? Truth is we follow GOD, and have always been behind him. The Carnival is GOD and may all Juggalos find him!\"
The other album: The Wraith: Hell\'s Pit, is what ICP thinks of what the place that all people, excluding Juggalos and Juggalettes and themselves will be like. Not once is the word Juggalo said on that album. It is their darkest, most wicked, and vile musical tale ever told.
The Insane Clown Posse is still here and the world has not come to consume us all yet. But there was no set time, for when it was supposed to go down. Their next album: The Calm releasing May 17, 2005, is all about the little calm time that happens before a big storm. So who knows what will happen after this album drops and maybe we will never know. But I'm sure that everything the wicked clowns have came up with, was not a bunch of nonsence. They were told to tell a story and thats what they did, they were not the ones who were told to make it happen. I hope this Biography has given you some insight on one of the most controversial groups out there today. Thank You!
Bio written by: The_Great_Milenko |
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