You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes

by Rabin, Nathan

  Disney and ICP. It would be hard to imagine a stranger or less feasible union, but Hollywood nevertheless felt it could break the duo nationally in a way Jive never could. It was scrubs fucking cheerleaders all over again—or in this instance, scrubs fucking Mouseketeers. For a brief idyll it appeared that Insane Clown Posse might just become MTV fixtures and mainstream superstars after all.

  While Insane Clown Posse lurched erratically toward the mainstream, MTV and pop radio fell hopelessly in love with Insane Clown Posse’s two biggest local rivals. The mainstream made Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope wait and wait and wait, only to give it up to Kid Rock and Eminem mere minutes into their first date.

  Kid Rock would become a huge pop star, but the cultural supernova that is Eminem dwarfed him. Violent J first learned of Eminem’s existence when the scrappy young rapper handed him a flyer to an upcoming record-release show promising guest appearances by Kid Rock and . . . Insane Clown Posse?

  In an impressive act of chutzpah and dishonesty, Eminem semipromised an appearance by a popular local act without ever bothering to ask ICP if they’d perform. J was, to put it mildly, not amused.

  This incident sparked a feud between Eminem and ICP that involved numerous dis songs, bad blood, and a notorious incident in which Eminem was arrested for pulling a gun on an ICP affiliate named Doug Dail. Rather than hype their feud with Eminem to sell books and generate controversy in the media, Violent J relegates his group’s explosive conflict with the best-selling rapper of the past decade to a mere footnote.

  That might seem a little perverse, considering Eminem’s massive fame and the public’s enduring fascination with him, but Behind the Paint is a book for Juggalos, and within the context of the Dark Carnival, Eminem is a minor figure at best. Insane Clown Posse is doomed to be a minor footnote in the Eminem saga. So Violent J returned the favor.

  J strikes an unmistakably Nixonian figure. ICP’s appeal to its fans echoes Nixon’s plea to his Silent Majority. Both loudly proclaim to their disgruntled followers that the elites of the world don’t like them, that they think they’re stupid and worthless and beneath their contempt, but that they understand and empathize with them on a profound level because they are them. Nixon put no distance between himself and his followers. Nor does Violent J.

  Eminem is JFK to Violent J’s Nixon. He’s the pretty boy with two of the most powerful people in music behind him: Interscope head Jimmy Iovine and producer Dr. Dre. Behind the Paint emphasizes the mundane legwork and incessant self-promotion behind Insane Clown Posse’s success to an almost perverse degree.

  Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope’s fortunes began to change when Disney recalled what was to be the duo’s Hollywood debut, The Great Milenko, from stores mere hours after its release and canceled ICP’s national tour and in-store appearances. In the blinding light of Southern Baptist protests about Disney affiliate ABC airing Ellen and unofficial “Gay Days” at Disneyland, Insane Clown Posse went from being a dirty little moneymaker to a public humiliation piled on top of others. The Mouse, it seems, was not as down with the clown as it originally let on. ICP signed to Island.

  Getting dropped by the Mouse proved to be a badge of countercultural authenticity; the ultimate embodiment of wholesome American values was exorcising these clown-faced demons from their holy body and casting them off into the wilderness.

  After years of endless toil and diligently building a fan base, Insane Clown Posse wanted a seat at the table. They wanted to be recognized and respected for all they had accomplished, but in a society and pop culture where money can buy just about anything, Insane Clown Posse discovered that there were limits to what their money, clout, and popularity could attain.

  By 1999, Insane Clown Posse had gotten about as far as any act can without scoring a radio hit or substantial play on MTV. The group understandably wanted to change that, so a crack unit of Juggalos and Psychopathic Records affiliates decided to launch a strategic strike deep into the heart of enemy territory: MTV’s Total Request Live.

  The infidels were at the gate. Insane Clown Posse’s website directed its fans to all totally request its music video “Let’s Go All the Way” on Total Request Live and show up at MTV’s Times Square Studio in a painted-up frenzy. The scrubs were shutting down cheerleader practice and angrily demanding mass blow jobs. Some four hundred Juggalos showed up in Times Square toting homemade signs angrily demanding that MTV let Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope be afforded the same exposure the network previously afforded such paragons of artistic integrity as Don Johnson, Milli Vanilli, and its very own Jesse Camp.

  It was just like Martin Luther King’s March on Washington, only completely different. The Psychopathic Records family had dubbed the strategic strike on the Lost Isle of Carson “The Mighty Day of Lienda,” meaning “The Mighty Day of All or Nothing.” At the end of the day, its sneak attack on Viacom’s inner sanctum was either going to expose the duo to a vast new audience or Insane Clown Posse would be crushed by the jackbooted forces of cultural repression.

  In pop culture terms it was Little Big Horn, and Violent J was General Custer: Hundreds of Juggalos were forcibly removed from Times Square, outside the MTV studios, by security, and the Insane Clown Posse video was deemed ineligible for Total Request Live since apparently MTV needs to okay videos before they’re eligible for the show.

  Violent J had transformed Insane Clown Posse into a cultural force, however maligned and controversial, by always listening to his inner carny, and his inner carny told him the stunt would make news whether or not it was successful. Hell, it’d probably make bigger news if MTV didn’t bend to the will of the Juggalo masses and play the video.

  As Insane Clown Posse and its fans welcomed in a new millennium and prepared for the first Gathering in 2000, Violent J was faced with a formidable challenge: What would the sixth, final, and definitive Joker’s Card be? Considering the role the Joker’s Cards play within the mythology of the Dark Carnival, it was a question and a conundrum of the utmost importance.

  Nobody ever said being a prophet was easy. As the time neared to reveal the final, climactic Joker’s Card, Violent J began to buckle under the stress. During a concert in April of 1998 he experienced a panic attack, blacked out, and cut off his signature dreadlocks. By his own admission, Violent J was fat, depressed, and out of shape.

  Then two seminal events occurred that changed his life forever. In Behind the Paint, J writes passionately about lolling about in a depressed haze one night, lazily masticating on his favored dish of sour cream with noodles, and literally took a long, hard look in the mirror and was disgusted by what he saw: big black bags under his sunken eyes, long, matted, multicolored hair, and a big fat gut.

  In a fit of self-loathing, Violent J decided he had to go somewhere, anywhere. Then something miraculous happened: J discovered walking. I’m not talking about the hardcore walking people do in specially designed outfits festooned with Nike swooshes in malls; I’m talking about plain old one-foot-in-front-of-the-other walking. J soon discovered that he loved to walk athletically; it set him free and released him from his demons.

  The simplest thing in the world saved J. There’s something incredibly poignant about that. Violent J really does have a childlike faith in the simplest of pleasures: a good bowl of sour-cream-and-noodle soup washed down with Faygo and a joint, followed by a brisk after-dinner walk. “I could write a whole book about my walking adventures,” J writes with guileless enthusiasm in Behind the Paint. He has thus far chosen not to.

  It wasn’t Scientology or primal scream therapy that saved J: It was simple, easy, free walking. Walking gave him the time and the space needed to contemplate the most important task of his young life: revealing the final Joker’s Card. The sixth Joker’s Card would reveal Insane Clown Posse’s ultimate message for the world. Would it be positive or negative? Would it be a revolutionary cry to overthrow a corrupt system, or a retreat into a hermetic world he could control? Would J go all L. Ron Hubbard on us and use the sixth Joker�
��s Card as the foundation for a cult? Weren’t Juggalos already something of a benign cult?

  Finally, the identity of the sixth Joker’s Card came to J: It would be the Wraith, or death itself. This was no ordinary Joker’s Card. For starters, it came in two parts: The first was 2002’s The Wraith: Shangri-La, while the second was 2004’s The Wraith: Hell’s Pit. The moral of the final, climactic Joker’s Card was clear: Followers were to lead a moral existence and purge themselves of their sins and wickedness so that they might ascend to the eternal paradise of Shangri-La, or else they would descend for posterity into the waking nightmare of Hell’s Pit.

  The message of the Dark Carnival is ultimately moralistic and conventional: Live a good, virtuous life and receive the ultimate reward, or sin and roast in the bowels of hell. In the end, the message of the Dark Carnival wasn’t too different from the morals imparted in Sunday school. To some Juggalos, that must have felt awfully anticlimactic. After those years of buildup and anticipation, they expected something more than a Juggalo reiteration of conventional morality.

  The first deck of Joker’s Cards ended as it must. For J ultimately isn’t a cult leader or a religious philosopher: He’s a dungeon master who came up with a cool game that got bigger and bigger and bigger until he couldn’t figure out how to end it without sending everyone home vaguely disappointed and underwhelmed.

  Insane Clown Posse had achieved just about everything but what it longed for most: the respect of its peers and the mainstream. After they left Island, ICP’s days as major-label artists were over. Their days as Gold and Platinum artists were over. After the revelation of the sixth Joker’s Card, Violent J’s days as a homemade prophet were over, at least for the time being.

  ICP IN A POST–JOKER’S CARD WORLD

  Following the revelation of the final Joker’s Card, the duo was forced to reexamine the direction of its career. If MTV had violently rejected Insane Clown Posse and critics continued to sneer, Insane Clown Posse discovered that the mainstream still had a number of roles for them to play, none of them flattering. The duo was still the default choice for worst-band-in-the-world honors.

  My 2009 memoir contains snide references to both Phish and Insane Clown Posse. I wrote those sentences without bothering to actually listen to any of the music or go to any of their shows. Why would I? That might entail opening my mind to music and ways of life my judgmental peers and an often-sneering critical community had thoughtfully rejected for me out of hand.

  When I met my half brother for the first time—we didn’t meet until I was twenty-three—he took me to the mall to buy Insane Clown Posse merchandise and apparel from the Hatchet-Gear collection. He was an ex-con, a teenage father, and the son of a heroin-addicted bipolar Vietnam veteran whose testimony against my mother in divorce court helped my father win custody of my older sister and me. I joked in my memoir The Big Rewind that my half sibling being Down with the Clown provided conclusive evidence that nurture, or rather lack thereof, played a more crucial role in the emotional development of a child than nature.

  My sibling fit the psychological profile of a Juggalo. He was raised by a mentally ill, pathologically self-absorbed mother in the heart of the St. Louis ghetto. Like so many Juggalos, he grew up in a home that wasn’t just broken: It was shattered. Violently. He was born to a mother who had a baby by a profoundly broken man even after he had testified against her in court. I saw my brother’s affection for Insane Clown Posse as incontrovertible proof of how fundamentally different we were.

  Today, I think about it differently. I imagine a world in which my mother had gotten custody of me. I might have grown up to be a Juggalo myself. The kinship of fellow Juggalos might have filled the hole in my life left by parental abandonment.

  In another lifetime, the ham-fisted parables of the Dark Carnival and the Joker’s Cards might have excited my intellectual curiosity and led me on a vastly different path. Like all teenagers, I was a follower, a cultist in need of strong leaders to tell me what to do and listen to and read and how to lead my life. Only I swore allegiance to the gods of my particular tribe. I saw the films the more respectable, highbrow likes of Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert and the Cahiers du Cinéma gang told me to see and listened to the critically sanctioned Rebel Music favored by the Greil Marcuses of the world and read the books every young burgeoning intellectual is required to read lest he look foolish or unrefined in the eyes of fetching young coeds he hopes to impress/bed.

  As the son of a University of Chicago graduate, I might not have fit the psychological profile of the Juggalo as neatly as my half brother, but I too came from a broken home and grew up feeling alienated and alone, ostracized and filled with rage. The difference, I suppose, comes down to expectations and taste. No matter how bad things got, it was always assumed I would go to college like my father before me and contribute something to society. The same could not be said of my half brother; college wasn’t part of the universe he grew up in. I didn’t have much growing up, but I clung to the notion that I had taste, refinement, and standards. The erudite critics who shaped how I saw the world had given me the life-affirming gift of being able to differentiate between art and schlock.

  So Insane Clown Posse became a pop-culture punching bag for the cynical, smart-ass likes of me. They were a joke that had gone on for far too long, the mainstream had decided, and it was time to put an end to it once and for all.

  As one of the founders of the Parents Music Resource Center, a committee formed in 1985 to warn parents of the dangers of potty mouths like Prince (whose risqué song “Darling Nikki,” with its line about masturbating in a hotel lobby with a magazine, helped inspire the group’s creation), Tipper Gore made a name for herself peddling a variation on the timeworn notion that rock and pop music and various metal and rap groups are a menace to society. Gore and the PMRC set out to have warning labels placed on albums with obscene content. The group succeeded in getting warning stickers on albums like ICP’s The Great Milenko, but that didn’t really leave it anywhere else to go.

  Just when it appeared that the Music Menace Brigade had breathed its last overheated, hysterical breath, it roared back to life to alert mainstream America of a threat to its children greater than any since the fall of the Third Reich: Insane Clown Posse.

  The renewed movement was spearheaded by a pair of clowns named Bill O’Reilly and Martin Bashir. O’Reilly’s 2001 piece on Insane Clown Posse is pure Music Menace 101. In classic form, it begins by presenting Insane Clown Posse as demonic pied pipers that fly under the radar of most adults but are universally known, if not necessarily beloved, by their kids, before teasing a “stunning” interview just after the break.

  Just before the interview, O’Reilly plays shamelessly to his overwhelmingly white, conservative middle-class audience’s prejudices by quipping, “What [Insane Clown Posse] advocates makes some of the black rappers look like Shirley Temple.” O’Reilly and his producers wanted to scare his audience, so they conjured up the most terrifying, threatening image they could imagine—black rappers—before announcing that there’s something somehow even worse!

  It doesn’t matter if it’s Elvis or the Rolling Stones or Jimi Hendrix or the Sex Pistols or Guns N’ Roses or Snoop Dogg, the hysteria stays consistent: These swaggering badasses are going to corrupt our precious sons and daughters with their devil music, and quite possibly take their virginity while they’re at it. And more often than not, they’re going to do it with black music, whether they’re black themselves or merely schooled in black musical traditions. It’s altogether fitting that O’Reilly interviewed ICP as part of an ongoing series sanctimoniously titled “Children at Risk in America.”

  Violent J wasn’t particularly familiar with O’Reilly before the interview, so he mounted his default defense: He’s an entertainer, not a role model. J argued that it’s ultimately up to parents to raise children and teach them morals, not clown-themed horrorcore rap duos.

  There are few things in the world more alarming than
clowns in nonclown contexts. Take a clown out of his natural habitat in circuses, sideshows, children’s parties, and nightmares, and he becomes a walking punch line. Accordingly, it’s utterly surreal to watch an ostensible newsman in a blue oxford shirt sit opposite a pair of men in clown makeup and treat them as a legitimate news story.

  Violent J handles O’Reilly’s badgering with the nervous defensiveness of an eighth grader being dressed down in front of the entire class; to Violent J, O’Reilly is just the latest in a long line of stuffy authority figures delivering stern lectures on the proper way to behave.

  O’Reilly then springs what he apparently imagines is gotcha footage conclusively showing ICP in the act of corrupting young minds. As evidence for the prosecution in the case of O’Reilly vs. ICP, O’Reilly offers a brief exchange at an in-store signing where Violent J asked a twelve-year-old boy, “Did your nuts drop yet?”

  This much is incontestable: As part of its ongoing commitment to stamping out injustice and elucidating profound truths, Fox News sent a crew out to an ICP in-store signing to clearly document Violent J asking the question “Did your nuts drop yet?” O’Reilly can’t bring himself to utter such vile words, so, with palpable disgust in his voice and his body shivering with righteous indignation, O’Reilly paraphrases J as asking, “Did you drop your testicles yet?”

  As Violent J answers O’Reilly’s idiotic questions, a distinct reversal occurs: The seemingly sane man in a blue dress shirt begins to look like a frothing, hysterical moron, and the men in clown makeup become the voice of reason and restraint by default.