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Murderdog & J
Interview with Violent J of Insane Clown Posse by DAVID FRIEDMAN,
Can we talk about 'Bizzar Bizaar', your latest album? What are your thoughts on that?
We can talk about anything you want. And first of all, 'Bizzar Bizaar' is what juggalos like about ICP - just a full dose of that. See, every album, we try to gain respect from music critics, from the industry. So we tried to experiment and expand. But this time we said, 'Fuck music critics and fuck the industry. Let's just give our fans what they want.' And we gave them a phat dose of the narcotic that they love, which is our flavor and our sound. And it's just that and nothing else. We're not trying to impress anybody but the fans we already got.
Are you satisfied with the fans you have and you don't want any new ones?
In other words, I'm richer than I ever thought I'd be. We go platinum every time out. What else are we trying to do? If we got much bigger than this, it wouldn't be very exclusive, it wouldn't be as personal with our fans as it is right now.
How do you feel about your fans, the juggalos?
When you have a fan base of roughly a million, maybe a little under, out of that million the majority of them have the right idea. Some of them have the wrong idea. But whether they have the wrong or the right idea, that's all I really want. I wouldn't mind two million or three million, of course. We don't have to try to experiment to get that no more. We're straight where we're at. I like being the underdog, I like being underground. Look at Eminem. He sold eight million records. That's just so much to fuck with 'cause you know his next record probably won't sell eight million copies. So he's just going downhill. My point is that where we're at, we're underground, we're platinum, we're straight. It's just so much easier to quit trying to defeat everybody else. It's so much easier to say, 'Quit trying to outsell everybody else and just be happy where you're at.' When you listen to the Jeckyl Brothers, which is our latest album, it's so pissed off at everybody. 'Fuck the world,' you know? Because they won't let us in these mainstream doors with the kind of music we do. They won't let us on radio, they won't let us on MTV. But this record is so much more happy because we're like, 'Fuck it, we're straight where we're at.' And the fans are the shit, man. They're fucking loyal soldiers. They're killers. If we said, 'Burn down MTV,' they'd burn down MTV. They're very, very fucking loyal because they feel very connected with us, very personal. Because it's not everywhere. It's just in their CD players; it's not on the radio. It's not for everybody; it's just for them.
On 'Bizzar Bizaar,' you have songs called 'Rainbows and Stuff,' 'Cherry Pie' and 'Mr. Happy.' Are you guys being sarcastic or are you really happy? And what made you so happy?
We've been pushing so long that we never stopped and looked where we're at. We've been pushing to get further and further and further for so long that finally, I think, over the last year or so we stopped pushing. And we took a look at where we're at. We were like, 'Damn, we've come a long way. This is the shit. Look at this. We've got all these juggalos. We can do conventions, we can do anything we want. We're straight.' Now, we're devoting our attention to keeping the fans we have happy, 'cause they are the shit. They are the greatest fans in the world. If it got bigger, it wouldn't be as close to them 'cause there'd be millions and millions and millions. So right now, where we're at, we could maybe get to know all of our fans by name. That's what it feels like. Every time we drop an album, we get to tour, we play the size venues we like to play. We're here for the juggalos, that's it. And anything bigger than that would be ridiculous. It would start to get very fake and shitty. We played a venue in Philly and I came out, I was walking to the bus, and I signed autographs for all these juggalos. And there was this bitch there. She was like, 'Hey, hey, where's your hotel at?' I was like, 'Don't worry where the hotel is.' She was like, 'Well what's going on? Let me on the bus.' She was really pushy. Finally, I said, 'What's my name. Nobody answer - just you' to the girl. And she didn't even know my name, but she wanted to know where the hotel is and to get on the bus and all that. And my point is that when you sell 10 million records, that's the kind of fans you get. Motherfuckers that don't even know your name, that just jump on your shit. Just jockin' you 'cause you're the thing of the moment. That bitch didn't even own any of my records. So when she sees me standing there signing autographs, she's on my dick. New Kids on the Block sold 10 million records, but where are their fans now?
Did you buy one of those New Kids records?
When I was a little kid, I was smarter than that.
Do you feel your fan base has already been watered down since the old school 'Carnival of Carnage' days in the early '90s?
The way I see it is the Dark Carnival is preaching a message to those that are meant to hear it. And I could be wrong, but I feel like we might have reached every one of them.
What's in store between now and when the sixth and final Joker's Card drops? Are you guys all going to put out solo albums?
No. Shaggy's doing a solo album and then Dark Lotus is coming out. See, the problem is we can't release the sixth Joker's Card on Island Records.
Why not?
'Cause they'll fuck it up. You know what I mean? It's a very intense
project. It is very delicate and they'll fuck it up. They're too big and
corporate.
So how many albums do you have to put out on Island to get out of your contract?
We gotta put out about three more. I figure if we put out Shaggy's solo record, Dark Lotus, perhaps a 'Forgotten Freshness Volume 3,' we can get out of it.
Would you sign with another major label after that?
Hell no, man. We are a major label. There's more people that work for
Psychopathic Records than work for Island. I mean, I wish you were here right now because I could show you a warehouse full of people working, shipping all this shit out and stuff. And most bands don't even have a warehouse; they don't even have an office. Most bands are sitting at home waiting for a call from the record label.
When you look back over the past year, what are the positives for ICP and its label?
For us, the year that we realized where we're at and we're comfortable with it. That's a big thing. The year that we stopped pushing and we realized that 'Let's give something back now to the people that supported us.' It's the first year that we stopped digging for gold. We stopped digging for hidden treasure. We finally looked at the people who have been helping us and said, 'Let's do something for them.' Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about: I got this warehouse out here full of fucking employees of Psychopathic Records, I've got Twiztid who we've sold 200,000 records of their last CD with no video, no radio. And to sell that many records underground - ICP did it and we figured out exactly how to do it. And to prove to people we know how to do it, we did it with Twiztid. So I have found the hidden path to success without MTV. Most record companies, they sign a band, they send a single out to the radio and if the radio don't pick it up, they drop the band. They use the same method of success. Every major company in the world does that. They sign an R&B group, and if it don't hit on MTV or BET, that's it. But I know how to do it without nobody's help, so I'm a guaranteed sure-shot at success every time out. And the only bone to that is, the only bad thing is nobody knows who you are. And it doesn't matter 'cause you're rich and you sold the records you wanted to sell. I used to be so positive of this that I just wanted Rolling Stone and MTV and the radio to know that I defeated them, and I found a way to platinum without their fucking help. And it was so frustrating. And now I sat back and I said to myself, 'Does it really fucking matter if they know or not?' They're not going to acknowledge them anyway.
Kid Rock and Eminem have lyrics that are just as offensive and on-the-edge as ICP's. Why does the mainstream media jump on their bandwagons, yet it wants no part of ICP?
I disagree. I think some of the things we say might be a little more worse than what they say. I think that they have a good deal of songs that are radio-friendly, where we have none. They might have some shit that's just as ruthless as ours, but that's not a hundred percent of the album. There's a lighter side in there and that's what radio jumps on.
Do you talk to Kid Rock anymore?
This has nothing to do with music. I personally hate Kid Rock, way more than I hate Eminem. That stems back from back in the days when I was trying to come up in Detroit. He was local and I'd go to his apartment and he would just diss me and diss me and diss me. And I'd sit there and take it like a bitch. And I hated him for that forever. I hated him when he was broke and local, and I hated him when he was worldwide and rich. I hate that kid, 'cause when I was coming up from '91 to '95, I sat and listened to his bullshit and his racism and all his bullshit-ass things. And I just sat there. He had a black girlfriend and he told me when she was sitting next to him, 'Never trust anybody black in this business.' Now, in my life today,or in the last five years of my life, I would have walked over and blew his grill out for disrespecting her and everybody else by saying that. I hate myself because I didn't do anything.
Why didn't you put him in his place at the time?
I don't know, man. That's why I hate him so much. And I'm telling you things that I've never told anybody, but my hatred for him doesn't go in the music industry. Without a doubt, of all the people I've known in my life, he's one of the biggest dicks I've ever known. The reason I didn't do anything was because he was Kid Rock. He had a record out in 1991 on Jive Records and he was like a local star. And ICP didn't come around until '92-'93, so I always looked up to him even though he wasn't doing shit. I remember we filled this place called the Ritz in Detroit and we sold out the Ritz for two shows in a row, a Friday night and a Saturday night. And the Ritz holds 2,000 people. And the most Kid Rock ever drew in Detroit at this point was 700 people. So after we sold those two shows out a 2,000 a pop, Kid Rock called me up and asked me if I'd open for him. He was so out of it, he was so disrespectful. And I tried to be so cool with him. I remember one time we went to this club together and he was like, 'I'm gonna get me a beer,' and he cut in front of the line. And this dude was behind him and he said, 'Hey man, you just cut in front of me.' And he turned around and he was like, 'You know who the fuck I am?' He was like a character out of a fuckin' movie. And this is before he blew up. So I could only imagine what he's like now. This guy was just the biggest fuckin' asshole I've ever known. Shaggy and my friends, they were like 'Fuck you, go over there on your own.' But I was just jockin' him, man. And I hate myself for it now. Matter of fact, I remember one time in 1995 I was at his house and he had this female manager - and this is true, too. It doesn't matter, 'cause I could be lying, but it's true. I was over there and I was talking to him and his female manager and his friend Kracker. You know who Kracker is? He's got this big, fat rebel flag tattoo on his arm. You know what the rebel flag stood for? The rebel flag stood for slavery. In other words, if the south would have won that war, we'd have slaves right now,which is why I think the rebel flag should be burned. Because it was for hatred. But anyway, Kid Rock and Kracker went into the bedroom to get something and his manager turned her chair toward me and she said, 'How do you guys do it? How do you sell so many T-shirts? How do you sell so much merchandise? Who designs them?' And then Kid Rock came back from the bedroom and she acted like she wasn't talking to me. And I remember thinking 'What the fuck? That was weird as hell.' The whole time from when we came out to when Kid Rock just recently blew up, we were bigger than him. And I just couldn't see it. Esham would say, 'We sold 80,000 records' and Kid Rock would say 'I sold 120,000 records.' And I'd go back to my manager Alex, and Shaggy, and say, 'Man, we only sold 60,000 records. They're selling more than us.' And we would work harder and bust our ass harder to match up with them. And the whole time we didn't know that in reality they were only selling 20,000 and 30,000 records. They were lying the whole fuckin' time about how big they were. But those lies is exactly what got us to where we're at, 'cause we would bust our ass to match their lies.
What is it about you and 2 Dope and Alex that drives you to hundreds of thousands of records, while several other groups from Detroit go nowhere?
I don't know what it is, but I know exactly what you're talking about.
There's two ways to make it. And every time I sit down with a group like Project Born or Simken Heights, I say, 'There are two ways to make it. There's Eminem's route or even Kid Rock's route where you get a hit record and radio jumps on it. Or get a Dr. Dre putting you out and radio jumps on that. And that's pretty much the route that everybody's taking. Or there's our route, where you've gotta walk the whole fucking way. You gotta bust ass the whole fucking way. Everybody waits for that ride, though. No one wants to walk that route. You want a million fans? That's easy. You go to a million kids and give them a flyer and a sampler and you say, 'Buy this album, it's the shit.' That's how you do it. Or you just wait for the radio to put your message out for you or MTV to put it out for you. But the sure way of making it is to walk that long-ass route with nobody helping you but your damn self. That's how we've done it, but most people aren't willing to walk that long-ass route. Those groups like Simken Heights, they don't push. They say, 'Fuck it.' They wait for a ride. It's hard to tell them, 'That's not how you do it,' because 99 percent of the groups out there got a ride. And they're like, 'I want to get a ride too.'
Does it feel odd to you that you started out looking up to Esham and now you're helping him push his product?
We looked up to Esham, and Esham did it the way we're doing it. But he made a lot of bad business decisions along the way. And they turned down a lot of good offers. They just made a lot of bad business moves. I don't know if he'll ever make the right decision. I'm not talking behind his back; I tell him this. He was gonna come over to Psychopathic Records and we had talked about everything. We worked the whole thing out. And at the last minute, he pulled out of it. And that was probably the worst move he ever made in his life, in my opinion, because the music he does, the whole fuckin' world would love it if they heard it. But he just makes bad moves and it just holds him back. He's been making bad moves for as far as I can remember, but he's one of my best friends. And as corny as it might sound, I feel his pain because I know he's doing this alone.
On another subject, what is Shaggy 2 Dope like?
He's trusts me a lot and pretty much, I can't say everything, but if I make a decision he's down to roll with it. But every once in awhile, he's like, 'No.' For example, the other day we were shooting a video in L.A., and I said, 'How about if we don't have makeup on in the beginning of the video and we just have them shadow our faces out?' Me and the director loved it and he said, 'No.' So when he's really against something, he stands up and says no, and I respect it no matter what it is. But most of the times I call the shots in the group and he's down with it. I think we're really lucky that there's only two people in our group because most bands - if you watch 'Behind the Music' and all that shit - they're always falling out. Everybody hates each other, whatever. But me and him, we never have any trouble. He was just here five minutes ago, and I hang out with him like friends when we're not doing music. We're always together, he's my boy.
Will there ever be a Violent J solo album?
I won't do that because of the fact that I'm more on the ICP records than he is. There's a lot of Violent J solo songs on our records, and there's not a lot of Shaggy solo songs. Plus, Shaggy makes his own music. He's got like a studio in his bedroom and he makes his own beats, so he's gonna do his own record. And it's so dumb - the reason why Shaggy doesn't do any of the songs on our records. The main reason is because he didn't have a CD burner. He just got a damn CD burner so now he can get me the beats and I can write to them.
What do you think of all the rumors about ICP on the Internet?
I read that I'm married with kids on the Internet!
Would you ever want to be?
Yeah, when I'm old or something. Not right now. I'm on so many panic attack insane medications that my dick won't even get hard, so I don't think I'll be having kids any time soon. They've got me on super medications right now. I get up in the morning and take all kinds of shit, 'cause I'm like clinically insane, man. Outta my fuckin' mind. And I know that because when I'm sleeping is when the medication's wearing off. And then I wake up in the morning and I take it again. I think if I ever lost my medication or something, I'd probably end up in a nut house again. I don't know where that comes from, man. But I'm just out of my fuckin' mind. Maybe it's because I'm a genius. When you're a genius, you see the way things really are in the world. And it drives you crazy.
Do you have a favorite song from 'Bizzar Bizaar' that you'd like to talk about?
I don't have any favorites because there's a lot of dope-ass shit on there. I like the song 'Radio Stars.' It's pretty fresh because it's me and Shaggy doing all these different types of music, trying to get on the radio. It's funny as hell. You're gonna love that one, 'cause we do R&B, rock 'n' roll, and we do down south bounce music. Super funny, man. I like the song 'Crystal Ball' with Twiztid, too. That's the shit. That song's like 10 minutes long. It's like the last song - it's the bomb. And then I like the song I did with Esham on the chorus called 'Questions.' I love Esham, you know? There's just like a bunch of ICP regular flavor. Like 'Mr. Happy,' that's about a happy-ass serial killer. It's typical ICP. And then we've got a song like 'Homey's Baby Mama Drama' or something like that. It's about fucking my homey's baby's mama. It's a lot of funny shit this time out. But the real thing about 'Bizzar Bizaar' is the packaging inside the CDs. One of them comes with 3D glasses; the other one comes with a spinner. And there's board games, there's crossword puzzles, there's maze, there's fill-in the blanks. There's all kind of fun games - word search - in the credits.
How about the signings by Psychopathic of Blaze, Vampiro and Perpetual Hype Engine?
Blaze is Twiztid's thing. That's really their project. I told them, 'Once you guys let me launch you, you can launch people.' That's how Psychopathic grows. Psychopathic used to revolve around ICP, you know? Now it revolves around ICP and Twiztid. Next year it will revolve around ICP, Twiztid and Blaze. It's gonna keep growing like that. We signed Blaze 'cause that's Twiztid's homey and his record's doing really good. It's not out through Island, it's just out on the underground. We wanted to test it. A lot of people really like it. I hate my song on there with Blaze. Vampiro and Perpetual Hype Engine are my things. Vampiro always wanted to be a music artist and he's really got a lot of heart for it. We went in the studio and I wrote a song and I recorded the lyrics for it. And Vampiro listened to it, memorized it, and we replaced all of my vocals with his vocals and it sounded great. And we couldn't believe it, he really could sing. We're doing his album now. He's just a cool motherfucker. We're out of wrestling, we're not wrestling no more, but I think he's still wrestling. But he wants to make music. He's a really, really nice guy, so we're gonna hook him up. First, we're gonna put out a sampler of Vampiro so everyone can see that he really is good. And I think everybody's gonna be shocked. And Perpetual Hype Engine, they're not gonna necessarily gonna hang around with ICP and Twiztid and tour with us. But they're on Psychopathic. They're like a rock band like Korn. They just got signed off of pure talent. I don't even know the guys.
How about the wrestling thing? Is ICP going to win the championship?
No. We quit wrestling like last week. You know, fuck wrestling, man. I watched that shit and I suck at that shit so bad. And I wish I could tell everyone in the world that I don't suck at wrestling that bad. It's just when you go to WCW or WWF, you've got like four minutes. And the referee has an earpiece and he's like, 'Three minutes,' 'Two minutes.' And every single thing you see is memorized. We start going over it at 2 in the afternoon. You've got to remember all of that shit. And Shaggy is great at remembering all of that shit, and all those wrestlers are great at it. But I fuckin' suck at it. So when I'm in there, I look like a big, gumpy-ass polar bear trying to memorize what's going on. And I'm moving slow motion. And after watching myself do that shit for three months, I said, 'I quit! Fuck this!'
How come you can remember all your lyrics, but you can't remember
pro-wrestling scripts?
I don't fucking know. I get out there, man, and I'm in the ring and I throw the guy of the ropes and I don't have any character 'cause I'm trying to remember. It's like, fuck, man, I can't do it.
So what else are you doing in your spare time these days?
Well, there is no spare time these days. No spare time at all. Now, we've got the new album coming out and I'm looking right before me and I'm seeing the immense monster schedule of in-stores and concerts and appearances. It starts off on the 30th of this month (October) and you know what we're doing? We're recording Dark Lotus right now. There you go.
Who is going to be opening on your tour?
We just got it all figured out and we just had a meeting and I'll be able to give you the first news in the whole world. You're the first person to hear it outside Psychopathic. Are you ready? It's ICP and of course we're the headliners - it's our tour. With special guests Methods of Mayhem, which is Tommy Lee's band; Chuck D.'s new band called Confrontation Camp; this group called Nashville Pussy that's just weird fucking rock shit; and I'm gonna call Esham to see if he wants to open the thing up. Chuck D.'s the shit because he flipped my wig. He came to Detroit and I didn't even know him. He called me. I couldn't fuckin' believe it. And he was like, 'I'm a juggalo.' And I'm like, 'Get outta here.' And he had all our shit and I couldn't believe it, and it was the shit, man. He had all of it. It kicks off two
weeks into November. We're gonna play everywhere, man.
Do you have anything else to say to your fans, J?
Look, man. The record says it all. The new album says it all. It's for them and that's all everything is catered for now. I'm through trying to reach this guy's crowd and this guy's crowd. I just want my crowd. If anyone tries to reach my crowd who doesn't have the Hatchet Man in their shit, I'll break their fuckin' neck. Yee-ah!
original interview |
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