7 thoughts on “Meet the Juggalos”

  2. Yes I am certain that all American males are obsessed with serial killers and lover raprock and pro wrestling

  3. Why isn’t the Japanese media reporting on this? It would make for such a great “trend” story about how the American male is compensating for the loss of imperial dominance through clown makeup and violent music.

  4. Hell, why isn’t the NYT covering it? Seems like a much more relevant and significant social phenomenon for them to focus on than 2-D fetishists in Japan.

  5. A search for the word juggalo turned up zero hits at nytimes.com

    “Insane clown posse” on the other hand had a couple articles from the late 90s but that’s it

    http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=insane+clown+posse&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=sub

    1998:
    “Cannibalism, torture, nose-picking and hating homework are all fodder for the raps of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, who spend a lot of time thinking about murder and bodily fluids.”

    “The music is secondhand and mostly second-rate, a lumbering imitation of gangsta and horror-core rap that makes Cypress Hill sound like geniuses of rhythm and the Geto Boys seem to rival Edgar Allan Poe.”

    1999:
    “The creative stakes are not high for this group. More like a novelty act than a rock or rap group, Insane Clown Posse uses music only as a backdrop for gross comedy. The tracks that backed Violent J and Shaggy’s vocal on Thursday were tinny, prerecorded concoctions with weak beats and no notable musical flourishes.”

    “As for the show’s stars, they are the morning jocks of rap. The indignant bleating of Violent J and Shaggy does not live up to the legacy of comics like Buddy Hackett, whom they obviously admire. Like the rock radio announcers who guide groggy commuters toward work with blustering machismo, these so-called rappers are generic bad boys who go for the cheapest digs.”

    Really, I think they said all that needs to be said about this group. That they have one festival a year shows they are a relatively tiny cult phenomenon, paling before trekkies or anything remotely similar. The long list of B-List celebrities and demonstrably horrible artists making appearances should tell you they were pretty desperate to fill the schedule.

  7. Adamu,

    Perhaps rightly so, but I think you’re being a little too dismissive of the whole ICP ’empire’. They’ve been involved in most of the top wrestling franchises (WWF, ECW) and even had their own stable of wrestlers at one point in the old WCW, not to mention their own franchise JCW. They’ve produced and appeared in their own straight-to-video movies, have inspired/manufactured a host of imitators, and then there’s the Gathering festival (“It’s not really a DJ battle, it’s more like a showcase of skill”) which is in its tenth year. What little I’ve heard of their music has been but the success they’ve had in generating an ultra-loyal non-urban white fanbase in the U.S. is all the more surprising when you consider they’ve done it with their peculiar brand of hip-hop.

    They’re still crap though.

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