Day 120: Insane Clown Posse – The Great Milenko
I went through a big period of researching subcultures and watched some videos and documentaries about Juggalos here and there, but have I ever actually listened to Insane Clown Posse? No I have not. I am aware of some of their lyrics, mainly the undying “Water, fire, air and dirt / Fucking magnets, how do they work?” To give a little bit of credit to Shaggy 2 Dope, I’m not sure I could explain it that well either. Some sort of atom-related jiggery-pokery.
Album cover courtesy of Island Records
I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m not much of a horrorcore girlie. I was once looking through some Halloween music recommendations and put on some early Three 6 Mafia, and boy is that not something I like listening to, my Ned Flanders disposition could never. But I’ve been sort of ICP-curious for a while now, and if a band is so good that a relatively large subculture forms around them, then surely there has to be something to the music itself. At least, one would think.
Here’s the first thing I didn’t know about Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J: these two fellas are showmen. I didn’t realise that they’ve built a whole big story and lore around themselves. They made the decision to set themselves apart by rapping about supernatural themes, but made a pact to never rap about Satan, which I find to be sort of quaint, all things considered. And this is yet another addition to an ever-growing list of bands and artists who were inspired by dreams and visions, as Violent J says he had a dream where spirits in a traveling carnival appeared to him, which inspired their backstory.
The band has a mythology around them about a fictional place called the Dark Carnival, where souls await judgement day but get to ride some amusements while doing so. There are six separate spirits in this netherworld, represented by six different joker cards. The gang says they created the myth of the Dark Carnival to remind their followers that acts have consequences and judgement awaits in the afterlife. If you think to yourself, “hmm, sounds biblical”, that’s the point. The violent and sexual clown-themed duo is actually surprisingly evangelical. Who knew?
The Great Milenko is meant to be ICP at their horrorcore peak, with some albums representing the group at more commercial pop-oriented times, while others focus more on the world-building aspects of the story of the band. It was released in 1997 but had to be withdrawn from sale within hours due to some of the lyrics causing controversy with Disney, the parent company of their label. Once it went back on sale, though, the album sold platinum.
Honestly, it’s not bad, per se. It’s passable-sounding rap about evergreen topics for artists like them, like killing police officers, being a serial killer or disliking women. Some of the songs sound sort of like the Beastie Boys in cognitive decline. It’s not something where you particularly want to listen to what they’re saying. I hear something like “I'm steady staring at your sister, I'll tell you this / You know for only thirteen, she got some big tits” and I find myself hoping that they’d pivot into the Christian stuff full-time.
I feel the same way about it as I do about Limp Bizkit: a relic of its time, like an auditory fossil that tells you what young men found to be edgy in the year 2000. The Great Milenko doesn’t make me want to ingest solvents and have a romantic encounter in a Portapotty, which probably means I wouldn’t make a good Juggalo, but I’m glad they’re having fun. 3/10, some things are just not for me. That’s enough of the Insane Clown Posse for the rest of my life.