Sunday, December 6, 1998

Violent J • Interview • Alone With Violent J • Part 2

 JUGGALOGICAL  
  INTERVIEWS 



Alone With Violent J
Part 2

"Hello world! We're The Insane Clown Posse"

Was it tough getting started as Insane Clown Posse?

Fuck off!!! You just expect me to be able to explain how hard it was during those days? Mere words could never explain that shit. That's like asking a ninja to tell you what it was like to be tortured. No matter how good he explains it, you'll never really no what it was like unless you were actually him feeling that pain! All that I can say is the whole fuckin' music world can fuck off. Everybody from other bands, to critics, to record labels, are all the same. They all only care for themselves, and if you ain’t on there team they wish you death. It's just like most of the rest of the world, pure evil! For years and years all that I heard from every last mother fucker I met in the music business was this "Ya know, you guys should try it without that face paint and hard lyrics, then you might get somewhere!" I Heard that shit for years and years and years. Now 8 years later we're fuckin' platinum and what do we hear out of everybody's mouth? 'The only reason you guys got anywhere is because of the face paint and hard lyrics, without that you wouldn’t get nowhere!" What the fuck? Why is it that everybody always tries to bring you down? They just hate to see somebody doing something fresh unless it's them doing it. Player hatred to the fullest degree. I Guess it's like Ice Cube said in one of his songs "For anything they do, fuck him and his crew, unless you are gettin' paid too"

So how hard was it?

Harder than a ninjas dick with Janet Jackson buffing it! I swore I'd never go on and on to anyone about how hard it was to get where we're at today, because I could never actually cover it by just trying to explain it, but fuck you, you asked! I could have 10 platinum albums on the wall and that still wont amount to all the dues we paid in this business. We paid enough dues for 100 bands. Fuck that, We paid enough dues for 1000 ICP's!!! Alex is the shit (referring to his manager Alex Abbiss) for sticking with us threw the most fucked up times. That mother fucker deserves 50 times more than he'll probably ever get out of this business. Shit man, we fuckin' pushed and pushed and pushed ICP on Detroit. Right from the very start, we knew that no label was going to just sign us, we had to prove that we could sell records ourselves first. I Would honestly say, that over the 6 or 7 years it took us to get a real record deal, I must of handed out 500,000 thousand ICP flyers to people at malls, on car windows or whatever myself. No lie! No exaggeration! That's just me! Alex and Shaggy are a whole other story… They had to cut down rain forest to supply our paper demand. We had Kinko's locked down in Detroit. We knew every fuckin' Kinkos location there was in Michigan. We stole hundreds of copy keys, and got live every fuckin' night! One guy would tie up the dorky ninja that worked there with a dumb computer question or something and the rest of us would carry the boxes of paper out to the car. I Would say again, no lie, I've probably spent 5,000 hours of my life at Kinko's Copies. Ninjas thought we worked there. We was making flyers, typing shit, making packages, doing the fan club shit, what ever the fuck it took. I Could be wrong, but that sounds about right to me, 5000 Hours. Oh, and promoting at record stores! We put ICP flyers in every last record store in Michigan and half of Ohio each and every fuckin' week! EVERY WEEK NON STOP!! Shaggy could show you every record store in all of greater Toledo cause that was his area. Every week 150 stores! Think I'm lying? Who gives a fuck what you think?

How was your private lives during all of this?

What private lives ninja? This is our life! Day and night! My crazy bitch got up and left! She was like "fuck this shit" and she was out. After 3 years she was gone. Cause she knew that I had entered a phase in my life that I would never again come out of. That phase is the Dark Carnival. She thought I was insane. Then I met another bitch that worked at a record store and took photos. She was perfect for me, but fuck no! She was out too… After 2 years with me, she packed her bags. Nobody was cool with being No 2 in my life. But they had no choice, either take that spot or get the fuck out cause ICP comes first! I Was not going to jail! I wasn’t struggling for money or for fame at all! I was struggling for everyone that believed in us. Alex poured his whole life into us and there was no way we were going to let him down. My brother sent home thousands for this and I would never let him down. My real homies worked day and night with us to make it all happen for years and years and I was not going to fail! Not on your bitch ass life! No way!!!

What about the music?

The music was fat like me naked! It was the shit! The studio was and is the only place that we are in total happiness! Mike E Clark is the greatest in the fuckin' galaxy! He dust the Dust Brothers! He smokes Muggs! He slaps Dr Dre! Nobody can fuck with him. I've worked with many ninjas and Mike E. Clark beats the shit out of all of them! Mike will go down in history. Ever since back in the day when we first met him, he was honest. We were stupid to the game and he could have snaked us out of thousands, but he never cheated us once. Well maybe once, but not twice. He works in the studio lightning fast. Studio bills were easy to handle cause he was so fast. Now he deserves everything he gets and more. Back then he was just an engineer and co- producer to our shit. But as we grew closer and sold more records, he kind of took the shit over. Now he makes the music himself and we just build to it a little. He used to tell me about bands getting record deals and then leaving him hangin'. I said "Bitch, have you ever heard a butt That’s what we'd sound like without you" Mike Clark is filled with the Dark Carnival's magic and he knows it. But the whole shit scares him. When he works with other artist, I don’t hear that magic, when we does ICP it's there to the fullest. 10,000 Bands want Mike to do their shit but I think it's pointless. Cause the spirits don’t like that outsider shit. That is the only time we can escape the drama my whole life is in the studio. The music is there and always will be, that is… if you like the wicked shit!

But doesn’t every band have to pay dues?

Mother fucker are you listening to what I'm saying? You think I'm exaggerating or something? We struggled harder than any band in the universe! We did millions of shows in front of 10 people on a good night! Sure lots of bands struggled that long and still are struggling, but hears the deal… I Refuse to believe that any band in the world has worked harder than us! Fuck no! No Chance. Any band that says they did would at least be right where we're at! Cause we got ZERO breaks! We lived, ate, breathed, died, fucked, danced, wrestled, stabbed and strangled ICP for 6 fuckin' years non stop! The other local rappers would be tellin' us that they had sold 100,000 albums on there own We would only be at like 40,000. I Would sit there and think "How the fuck are they doing it? We must work harder". Now I know that what they said wasn’t ever true I'm glad they lied to us cause that just made us work harder! While they slept on there lies, we were the biggest in Detroit the whole time and never even knew it!
I lost 80% of my best friends over it… I Lost 2 bitches and I was truly in love with them both at the time. My Brother sent cash home from the Army and when he got out, he jumped right in the struggle with us that day. We believed in Psychopathic Records and we believed in ourselves bitch. Do you hear me? We fuckin' sold each and every CD one by one. We lived like bums just so Psychopathic could do better. Every kid in Michigan knows who ICP is, even if he hate us. That's cause he probably got 5 or 6 flyers shoved up his ass in the last 6 years! Why did we even bother? Why were we so driven? I'll tell you why! It was the force of the Dark Carnival! It's message must be sent! We knew it, so we had to do it!

Was it worth losing all that? Was it worth it all?

Yes and I'll tell you why! Sure we lost a lot. We was devastated when our bitches left. We was crushed when our homies bailed. But now I see who my real peoples are. They weathered the storm. They understood our dedication and supported our mission and still do. They hung on and allowed us to slip at times, while the rest just bailed on us. I Know we were dicks, I know we left many people hangin back then. But with 9th grade education and mile long criminal records it was this or nothing. The real people helped and went threw it all with us. They listened to our Dark Carnival shit open-mindedly.

Fuck! Now a days it's the shit cause we're helping each and every one of them, make their own 'dreams come true! Each and every one! It all balances out! Psychopathic is a family of ninjas that have each others backs to the fullest! Plus them bitches that left on me, Fuck em'! I've got to dip into some hot ass groupies since then! As for the homies that jetted, that's all good. We made mad new homies… Fuck y’all! Plus I'm rich now.. Did I mention that? I Have two cars: A 99 Black Navigator truck and a Black 99 Corvette! Wanna drive them? Oh yeah, that's right, I don’t know you anymore! HA!

During your struggling days, you guys started getting popular right?

(Pausing to stand up and stretch. Then he suddenly kicks a box full of cassettes across the room for some odd reason. J finally sits back down, yawns and continues) By like 1995, we had released the 1st and 2nd Jokers Cards (Carnival Of Carnage and Ringmaster) and 3 EP's (Beverly Kills 50187, The Terror Wheel and A Carnival Christmas) on our own Psychopathic Records! It all totaled something like 300,000 record sales combined and still we had no mother fuckin' record deal. Alex went to 4 music conventions and they all said the same thing "If your a un-signed band and you some how can sell 10,000 records on your own, you'll have every major label eating out of your hand!" So we thought ok, we can do that, next thing you know we had sold almost half a million records and couldn’t get shit! Why? Cause every label looked at our painted faces and thought we were just a local joke or the lyrics scarred them away. But we didn’t stop. We didn’t change shit. We don’t paint our faces, this is our faces! Asking us not to wear it is like asking someone to cut their dick off
We sold more and more records on our own and dumped every fuckin' dime back into Psychopathic Records! We never spent shit, not even $10 bucks for a hair cut! I Looked like Meatloaf. Me and Shaggy looked like Nelson. Nothing for ourselves. Our shows locally were always sold out, CD's flying off the shelves, yet no love from label boy. Fuck it, nothing stopped us, we kept climbing and climbing Detroit's popularity spread to Flint. and then to Toledo and on and on! Finally Bitch ass, hoe ass, snake ass Jive records calls us and BOOM!!! We jumped all over it! Where do we sign?!?!

What happened with Jive?

They gave us $80,000 measly dollars to sign. They wanted to release the 3rd Jokers Card, Riddlebox! Alex was against us signing with them the whole time, but me and Shaggy were ruthless about it. We should have listened. Shit, on our own we were already pulling almost 7 figures in a year just off our record sales try'na get signed! They were giving us a really shifty deal on the money but we figured at least the record would be out nationally right? Wrong. When they released Riddelbox in late 95' they really only stocked it in Michigan and watched it sell to the fans that we had already built. Jive never believed in us. They didn’t even put the name Jive on the CD! They went under another name "Battery Records" like they were embarrassed of us or something. They didn’t do shit for Riddelbox. They knew it would flop everywhere but Michigan! That's why they gave us such a shifty deal on the money! It was there plan all along! They must have sat there in there offices in New York and said "Hey, look at this guys... These clowns are selling like crazy in Michigan. It would never work nationally so lets sign them for next to nothing. We'll put there new record out in Michigan where there hot and we'll make all there money! Hell they already did all the work" That's exactly what they did.

What did you do after that bullshit happened?

After that bozack, that would have been the end of many other bands. But not many other bands are driven by The Dark Carnival. What did we do next? We said fuck it! They already know us at home, so lets get the fuck out of here. We threw a dart on the big map in Alex's office and it landed on Dallas Texas. So we grabbed our 10-gallon hats, tight ass wrangler jeans and headed out west. Using all of our own Psychopathic Records money, we drained our accounts. We pressed 100,000 sampler cassettes of Riddlebox, bought 3 painted up, Riddelbox Vans, and hired 4 more ninjas. We took to the streets of Dallas with full force. We did this all by ourselves. Jive was completely out of the picture. They didn’t help or pay for shit. We did this just to prove to ourselves that we could sell outside of Michigan. And we did! We walked into every record store in and around Dallas ourselves. We'd ask for the manager and we'd tell him or her that we are doing major promotions in the area for a group called ICP! We told them they should order and stock some of there latest album Riddelbox on Jive records! Then we hit 3 different high schools every day with our 3 Riddelbox Vans! School would let out and flock to the vans for free samplers. We got arrested 4 times around Dallas! 4 Different police stations all let us slide with a warning and told us to go home. But we stayed. We handed the samplers out at schools, malls, churches, jails, bingo halls, funerals, tittie bars, we didn’t give a fuck! Everybody got one in Dallas! Even fuckin' Chuck Norris got one!

Did it work? Did you blow up in Dallas?

Like a fat lady during the holidays. We blew the fuck up! Next thing you know Jive is like, "Hey ninjas. You guys are the Shit! Your busting your ass to make us money' Dallas is up to 15,000 units in just 6 weeks! Riddelbox has now sold 100,000 copys! You've got a top 20 record in Dallas! We were wondering when you'll be handing in your next album? We're ready when you are!" I Was like, "How about I hand you my nuts and you can slurp on em?"' We told Jive to eat shit and fuck of! "We're done with you're bitch asses! We can do this shit our damn selves! Y’all didn’t do shit for us anyway! Fuck y’all! We're Psychopathic Records and we're better and more powerful than y’all anyway. What the fuck were we thinking to sign with your weak asses? You don’t know shit about ICP and it's power!" Then Jive came back and said "Look, we didn’t really know weather or not ICP had any selling potential outside of Michigan, but after seeing what you did in Dallas, now we believe you do.." And I said, "Well in that case, would you like my nuts with mustard or mayo? Fuck off!!!"' And that was it. We were stuck. Jive wouldn’t let us go cause we were under contract with them for 4 more albums. We refused to make them another record. We was like Andre The Giant's dick was in most nedens! no room to move!

Mean while, when we were stuck on Jive, we were broke, but we gave no fucks. We went out touring again and again! We kept pushing our shit anyway! Even though we didn’t know our future, Riddelbox was climbing in sales. Dallas was spreading, word was getting out everywhere on the underground that we were the shizzzzzzznit, byatch!

That's When Hollywood Records came along right?

Wrong! First your mom came along and we all ran a train on her! Then Hollywood Records came along. They said, "Hey ninjas, we heard about you guys! You guys are the shit. We get what ICP is all about! You need us and we need you!" Hollywood Records was the shit. We told them that were stuck with Jive and they said "Fuck that, we're owned by Disney! We got crazy bank! We'll just buy your contract off of Jive. Jive has no choice but to sell you, cause you won’t give them another album anyway!" Boom, next thing you know, we were on Hollywood Records! They promised us that just because Disney owns them, it has nothing to do with the music they put out and who they sign. They told us that Disney also owns Miramax films and look at all the ruthless shit they put out! So then we agreed and handed in the mighty 4th Jokers Card. The Great Milenko was a masterpiece in my eyes. Mike Clark's magic was in full effect. Our magic was banging. Finally a label was working with us instead of just watching us do the work. They constantly told us that it was amazing how much work we put into ICP. They couldn’t believe how much shit we do ourselves. My head was so big I couldn’t fit out the door, we had to knock a wall down! Anyway, yall know what happened with that shit.

I know it's played out by now, but give us a brief explanation please!

All the sudden our Hollywood Records ninja Julian Raymond, flies out to Detroit. He has us meet him at a downtown hotel on the 15th floor in his suite. Me Shaggy and Alex get there. He's just as upset as we are about to be. He tells us that Disney heard the Great Milenko album and that they want us to remove 3 songs from the album because of the lyrics! I was just about to throw him off the balcony, Shug Night style, when Alex and Shaggy stopped me! We were all devastated! All 4 of us! There was nothing we could do. Disney would not release the album with them songs on it. We had to take them of. Then on the way back home Alex opened our eyes. He said "What the fuck? We're Psychopathic Records! We rule the underground! We'll just wait until after The Great Milenko comes out and then we'll just press up an EP and put them 3 songs out ourselves! Sure we're not allowed to, but fuck them! We'll do it any fuckin' way!" That was the plan. So we took the songs off and handed the album in, again.

Then what happened?

By then we was pretty big in alot of areas around the country. Psychopathic Records put Riddelbox on the map. Ninjas nationwide were ready for The 4th Jokers Card. We did a tour called the Omen Tour to warn people that it was coming. Milenko was going to be available in every store in the US. It was going down. This would be our first major release. The Dark Carnival's messages would be heard by all! We had a national tour booked. We had in-store appearances booked everywhere. We had it all ready for the Great Milenko to emerge from beyond.

Then on the release day, BOOM! The Great Milenko got yanked out of the stores by Big Papa Mickey and his fat bitch Minny! Everything was cancelled! We were all the sudden out of business. How would we ever survive this shit?

I guess what happened is a giant group of Southern Baptist all voted to boycott Disney that week because of some other ruthless shit Disney was involved with, and the news was all over that story. So at the last minute, Disney tried to clean up there image by hiding us! They thought they could just remove us from the shelves before anyone caught them putting out trash like ICP too! They tried to remove us and cover the whole thing up before they got caught. Well it didn’t work! They got caught red fuckin' handed! Alex called the LA times that night and gave the whole story! That was the greatest move in ICP's history! With that one phone call, Alex saved our whole shit and put us on the map at the same time.

How? What happened?

The next morning it was on the front page of the LA Times. From there it was everywhere. The whole world caught Disney trying to make money off of us evil bastards! When it comes to The Disney Co. They don’t just want that good, clean Snow White money - They want this evil, wicked Juggalo money too I guess.

Disney tried to cover there own tracks by saying that they didn’t know anything about our lyrics. Even though two months earlier they made us take 3 songs off Milenko that they didn’t like and the rest was fine.

The whole shit was scary to me. It was really weird to hear a giant well known company just out right lie like that. That scared me to know the world is that fucked up! Here's a giant, well-loved corporation straight up lying like a school boy to his teacher. They sat there and lied to everyone by saying they didn’t know about our lyrics and that ICP slipped threw Disney's review process! Yeah right, explain the last minute changes you made us make on the album! Explain the half million you gave us FOR the album!

Everything was cool until that giant group of church members put the spotlight on that bitch ass. Then you got caught with your evil hands in our wicked clown cookie jar too, mutha fuckas!!!

So they dropped us, and said that they'll let us go if we sign a contract that says we'll never bad mouth Disney and that we'll never discuss this topic publicly. As you can tell I signed it and I have remained silent since! (More laughing with Billy Bill who is still present). Hollywood wasted like 2 million dollars of Disney's cheddar promoting and shooting videos for an album that was only on the shelves for a day. On top of that, they gave us a half a million to make the album and then they didn’t want it!!! Ninjas got fired, ninjas got re-hired, it was pandemonium over there in the Hollywood offices!

The press picked up on Disney's attempt to hide it, huh?

Yeah! The press was everywhere Then mad record labels started looking in to us and our history. Many labels were shocked to see how many albums we had sold on the underground. They couldn’t believe how big we were and yet they had never heard of us! Well one thing led to another and then a big ass bidding war took place. Most of the labels were just trying to cash in on the hype, but 3 labels really saw what we're about. Epic, Island, and Restless Records. They all wanted to sign us to big ass, long term, fat money contracts. Them 3 were duking it out over our contract while the press was going insane over the whole deal! CNN, Fuckin every news paper, everything everywhere talking about ICP getting dropped because of fucked up lyrics. Island wins the war so we sign with them. Not only because of money but because they seemed the realest. They believed in the Insane Clown Posse!

The album comes back out with all of its original tracks this time and then BLAM!!! We're finally a legit contender in the game of rock and roll, baby bitch, Whooooo!

Was this when things for ICP finally changed for the better?

Sort of! Yeah, we were paid and yeah we had ninjas working the album the way they should. But, then we started to get dissed hard by the media. Some papers said that it was a scam by us all along to sell records. They said that we were just a fly by night attempt to make some money and that as soon as the Disney hype ends, we'll never be seen or heard of again. They said ICP is not even a real band and nobody ever heard of us before the Disney shit and nobody will hear of us after. Nobody looked to see that their latest album Riddelbox prior to any Disney shit had sold 150,000 copies and all that. It's just that ICP was so underground that nobody knew about us. When I say underground, I mean underground. Mad groups all call themselves underground, but fuck that, ICP was UNDER the underground! Only snakes, serial killers and ninjas in Hell were bumpin' our shit! So, nobody knew we was ever there. But we were, ICP has always been here with fat record sales.

When the Great Milenko album finally came back out, mainstream critics and everyone all said that it sucked. Nobody understood it. It wasn’t for them. It was for the underground Juggalos that we always have been for! It's funny cause everything flipped over on us! We went from hearing this all day "You guys should take off the face paint, nobody likes that shit" to hearing this all day "The only reason anybody likes you is cause of the face paint". Everything went from one side of hating us, to the other. They hated us coming up and they hate us at the top too. That's why I say, we're the most hated band in the world. No Rolling Stone, No Spin, No MTV unless we're getting dissed. I was going crazy at first over all that shit, but then it dawned on my stupid ass!

What dawned on your stupid ass?

Are you calling me a stupid ass? Mother fucker!!!

No, I meant what dawned on you?

Fuck, proving ourselves to them! Who the fuck are they? Fuck them and fuck what they think, cause we're here for ever! They ain’t getting rid of us, we're getting rid of them! Fuck fitting in to their world! Fuck their world! I never fit in at school when I was a kid and I got by just fine. Why should I sweat that shit now? Fuck your magazines and your bitch ass video shows! We got our own Juggalo world! That's all we need and that's all we want!

How do you feel when a critic says your music is shitty?

First of all, I don’t care enough about what he thinks to feel anything. Who the fuck is he? Who is a critic? If he's so fuckin' good at music why don’t he make the shit? Look, this is what I believe and it you disagree go fuck yourself! The Spice Girls are the shit! Why? Cause they sold 10,000,000 albums bitch! Sure, me and you might not like their music but fuck us! 10,000,000 other people love it! How can we say they suck? How the fuck can we say they have no talent when 10,000,000 people love there shit? They make all those people happy with there music yet I'm going to stand up and state it as a fact that they suck?? Who the fuck am I? I take my fuckin' hat off and say "You girls are the shit! I might not dig it myself, but that's just me You girls are definitely the shit". Besides, I'd fuck the shit out of all of them if I could!
Check this out. I've rocked 3000 Juggalos in concert and every last one loved the show. They would chant ICP for 15 minutes after the show wanting more. Then I get up the next morning and read the paper and here's some dick head critic reviewing our show and talking about how much the show sucked! What??? What about the other 3000 that loved the show you fuckin' asshole? What are you trying to say? That they are all wrong and your right? Fuck you! I can’t believe critics even exist in this world. I thought the fun about life was judging shit for yourself. I don’t need some bitch ass critic judging for me. If a movie sucks, I'll be my own judge of that. I don’t give a fuck what Siscle's fat ass thinks. I Don’t need Ebert to tell me it sucks! I Could give a fuck less about what Ebert likes! I'm Violent J! I'll tell you what I like and don’t like! Fuck what somebody else thinks is the shit or sucks! Fuck critics! Siskle and Ebert both said the movie Crimson Tide was a great film and they gave it two thumps up! Well I saw it and I say it sucked!! So Siskle and Ebert can go fuck each other! How's that? And every other critic can eat shit and die? Even if you loved our shit and you gave it a good review, who gives a fuck what you think!? Keep our name out of your shit, cock suckers! Fuck off!

Then You hooked up with Twiztid and Myzery? How did that happen?

I knew of this wack rap group in Detroit called the House Of Krazees. They had mad talent and I always tried to get them to come to Psychopathic, but they had this wack commitment to thier manager. They sounded just like Esham to me, only sloppy. But they were really cool so we invited them on tour. Thier manager was whack as hell! He didn’t know the music business from his butthole! The House Of Krazzes dropped off the tour when we came threw Detroit for some stupid reason! There manager pulled them of I guess! Why I'll never know, because I don’t care enough to ask anybody. Anyway, the tour went on. It was fresh. Then we got home, and two of the guys from House Of Krazees called me and told me that they left the group and started there own group. The two guys were the two better rappers anyway, so I said "Yeah! Ill put you down!" By now I figured we know how to make a group blow up cause we know what works and what don’t. The House Of Krazees have been around Detroit for years but they were stuck forever. Their tactics sucked. Their ideas were weak. They sucked on stage. Everything about them sucked accept some of the music. We took the two ninjas and applied that Psychopathic Flavor and the rest came from them. What amazed me was how fat the music was. They did it all themselves! Back in the House of Krazees days the music was done by that third guy. So there was no telling what they would sound like without him. But somehow they sounded better! Twiztid took form quick. They are the shit. We all went back on tour and night after night they got tighter. Now they are the ultimate shit. Their stage show is tight, their music is great and their raps are the bomb diggity. We grew closer as homies as the weeks and months went buy Them ninjas went threw alot of shit back in the day. They paid helly dues. They’re Psychopathic for life! They're proud to be, and we's prouder to have them! But allow me to step oft there nuts now!

Myzery is a rapper that my brother brought to Psychopathic. My brother has family in the Bronx and that’s how he met Nay Nay. I Always had the feeling that Myzery thought our music was wack. It seemed like he just wanted to get his break so he hung out. It seemed like he thought the Dark Carnival was a joke. Then I got to know him more and more and that feeling went away. He never truly believed in it though. I even showed him the Dark Carnival's magic in our studio and he thought it was a trick! I only show my best friends that shit too. He's a cool mother fucker though. He gets mad skins. Like 5 times more than he should. Every bitch loves him. He looks like Tupac with his headband on. Him, and his homie Ponch are the shit. They are very quiet about things. You never know what there thinking. They sort of let us know without saying it that they wanted out of Psychopathic Records. See, Psychopathic is into some bizarre shit and it has that reputation. Myzery is more into New York raps. Even though the shit we say is our reality, it ain’t theirs. They come from another place, and they are just into different shit than us. They toured will us twice. He dropped an EP on Psychopathic, and it's still out. I don’t think they liked our ideas. They said our crowd wasn’t there crowd. As for me, I don’t give a fuck! Any crowd is my kind of crowd as long as they some Juggalos!!! But they just stressed that they wanted to get a bigger hip hop, rap only crowd. Hangin' around with us was killing that for them I think. Myzery went back to New York to try some other avenues. We stop over and hang when we come threw New York. My brother is really close with his family. I wish that ninja and his homie Poncho mad luck out there.

Tell me about your Panic Attacks

If I talk about it, I'll have one and then I'll probably kill you! I was on the road for a year straight! I went insane in the bus one morning but it went away! I tried to tell everyone but they just dissed me. When I was flipping out that morning I wanted to kill myself. I was sweating, I couldn’t breath, I was terrified and now I'm going to kill you!

What?

I told you I don’t want to talk about that shit right now! I'm going to slap you. Look, I went fuckin' nuts. That shit sucked! I got over it that morning cause I finally passed out and when I woke back up it was over. About 2 weeks later I was on stage in St Paul and it happened again. I Looked at Shaggy while I was standing there tripping out and all I can say was he was rapping. He was just rapping at the crowd! It just looked weird at the moment. Then I couldn't breath. I Felt like I was rolled up in a carpet! Everyone was looking at me! I Felt like shooting myself again. Billy Bill and my brother pulled me to the back and dumped water on me! I felt like I was drowning. It was some wack shit. I think I was crying, suffocating, terrified, panicking and rapping on stage at the same time. I finally came off stage and passed out again in the dressing room. That night we cancelled everything else and went straight home.
The next day I was laying in my bed going completely insane. Nothing was fresh. Everything sucked. I was watching commercials and I wanted to cry because the people on TV were smiling and acting normal, but I couldn’t control myself! Hours were going by! I Couldn’t breath! My dogs were against me! My house was a tomb to me! My brother came home and rushed me to a regular hospital. Everybody showed up when I was still in the waiting room. I Had to escape this dreaded hospital before they take me in the back where I can’t breath. So I left the waiting room. Shaggy was driving me back home. He was talking to me but I have no idea what he was saying. He was against me! His car was smothering me. The music he was playing was stealing my air. I finally got back home where I was safe but it was all a trap. The TV was killing me! The little light on the radio was torturing me. The walls were stealing all the air in the room. The phone was destroying me! It was just sitting there! I tried to move it across the room but it still was killing me somehow.

See when you break your arm you can focus on the pain. You can say to yourself.. "Ok, my arm hurts. I know what I need to do. I Need to fix my arm. It hurts when I move it. So I wont move it. I Need to fix my arm." But when your loosing your mind you can't focus on the problem because the problem is in your head! You say to yourself "What’s the problem here? Why am I scared? Fuck being scared, I cant breath! Wait I'm breathing but I can’t feel it. I Have the pain of suffocating yet my lungs are breathing.. Why am I sweating so much? I'm scared right now... why? What can I do to stop this? Nothing!" I went threw that shit for 24 hours with no sleep. My brother finally took me to a mental home. I can chase the fuckin' ducks around the pond and bark like a chicken! Then they fixed me. You don’t need to know any more. Some things have nothing to do with anybody but me. All you need to know is they didn’t stick anything up my butt. And I'm fine now. I was having severe panic attacks level 10! But I'm over it. As soon as I kill you all the voices will go away, so come here!

PART 3 COMING NEXT WEEK.


 THE DARK CARNIVAL DEFINED PART 3 OF 4 


 INTERVIEWS 

Violent J • Interview • Growing Up As Violent J • Part 1

 JUGGALOGICAL  
  INTERVIEWS 



GROWING UP AS VIOLENT J  PART 1

First and Foremost... Be very specific about when, where and why please.. What is your real life story?

I Was born back when I was a baby. I lived in Berkley, Michigan somewhere with my mom and my real dad. My real dad was a punk bitch and he left us hangin' when I was like 2. Then my mom moved into a different house on the other side of Berkley. My mom re-married to this other dick head, bitch a few years later. He was a big time dick though. He really fucked my mom and my family up bad. Really, really bad. I guess I was too young to remember most of that shit, but from what I do remember he had to be the devil himself. I could disappear from this whole rap game at any second and be serving a life sentence, cause me and my brother Rob (Jump Steady) will kill him if we ever happen to bump into him some day. My mom divorced his old bitch ass and we moved to a cheaper flat a few miles away still in Berkley. I lived there till I was like 10 or something. That house was haunted, but we was down with all the ghosts. They used to fuck with the dickheads that lived under us, but we was the ghost's homies. They knew my mom was going through some shit at the time and she didn’t need some fuckin' ghost to stress over too. But back to my second dad, If there’s a hell, that mother fucker has a first class reserved spot in the anus of hell, dog.

You were down with the ghost? What the hell are you talking about?

The house we lived in was haunted. Me and my brother would watch shit slide across the floor by it's self. At first it scared the shit out of us. One time I opened our bedroom door and there was a mop standing straight up in front of me. It was just chilling there. It was standing straight up. I pissed my underoos looking at that shit. I screamed for my mom. Everybody watched it. Then it just fell over when my mom reached for it. Anyhow, some time after that, me and Rob sat down on the living room floor when it was dark and no one else was home and we said to the ghost "Come on ninjas, don’t scare us. We just live here with our mom. It ain’t our fault we're here" Then we told them all the shit my mom was going through and we said "Look, we'll do what ever you want so that we don’t disrespect your house. But just be down with us instead of against us". And then it was on. from that day on they were our homies. They would scare our friends that we would have spend the night but not us. One time, one of my sister's friends was spending the night and she was taking a leak or whatever in the bathroom. The ghost cut the lights off and broke this little glass duck thing against a wall. She was shook as hell. My guess was she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing in there. Maybe stealing some shit from us or something, and the ghost got pissed. They were the shit, they would cut the lights on for us when we came home and off when we left. I loved them.

How was your childhood? Did you have a rough time growing up?

My childhood was probably the freshest on the fuckin' planet. I wouldn’t change one thing except for what my mom went through with her husbands. But as for me, hell naaaw, my shit was the bomb. Every last bit of being a kid was the shit. My childhood was without a doubt the greatest time of my life. I Remember we were always mad fuckin' poor.. My mom was a janitor at a big ass church for something like 5 years. We were always on welfare and shit. Foodstamps for days. Block Cheese and powered milk. My mom would mix that shit with real milk to try and dilute it, but that shit always tasted like Milk flavored Kool Aid. But we never lived in a ghetto. We always lived in a regular blue-collar area. I Remember kids used to make fun of us because of my mom's car when she would drop us off at school. My mom always had a bucket. Some of our own fuckin' dick head friends would actually ask our mom to drop them off a few blocks before we got to the school so they wouldn’t be seen with us. But me and my brother loved it. We gave no fucks. I ain’t just saying that, we really didn’t care. We didn’t give a fuck. It was our style. We were then and still are The Mighty Bruce Brothers. Our own friends were embarrassed to ride in our mom's car but I thought it was the shit! Besides, where was there fuckin' moms to drive us? Probably at home suckin' on the mailman's nizzo's. My mom was the shit and always will be. That’s why my mom now drives a pimped out, fat ass, Durango, 4-wheel truck with black leather interior byatch. Who's laughin' now? (looking at his friend Billy Bill and laughing, Billy replies "Hell yeah"). Anyhow, I Loved the fact that me and my brother were the notorious nerdy Bruce Brothers. We were known for being super poor and super scrubby. The girls in school would play games and say if you step on a blue tile in the hall you have to kiss one of the Bruce brothers and then everyone would go "eeeewwwwww"". Yeah, but 15 years later them same bitches are lining up to blow us in the back of the tour bus. Ha ha ha.. (Laughing with his friend Billy Bill again)

Go on with your life story...

I am bitch... I was the shit. I wore the same pair of sweat paints all year long. I remember in grade school in Berkley, the school would serve a hot lunch at lunchtime. It cost $1.10. My mom never had the loot to give us, so they would let you borrow it at school from the office. You had three days to pay it back, after that they would announce your name and say that you owed the office money over the morning PA announcements. It was always the same fuckin' names all year long, every year. "Rob and Joe Bruce" . I Loved that shit. All the kids in class would turn around and look at you. I was always happier to be the kid getting looked at, instead of one of the dick heads doing the starring. I gave a fuck less. I loved it.
I remember I shit my paints in the 3rd grade. I know that’s way to old to still be shittin' your paints, but I had to do it. I couldn’t hold it. I took my underwear off in the school bathroom and cleaned my ass. I was trying to be fast as hell so know one would catch me. I accidentally left my underwear in the stall and jetted out back to class. My mom had my name written on the stitch so she could tell mine and my brother's apart. I got busted. Mad kids found it. They even had it on a stick and chased me through the hall. I was dissed hard for that shit for years. I fuckin' loved it. I wish I still had them drawers. My childhood was the bomb diggity.

Ah.. Ok...?

(Sipping his water) I'm so happy that we was poor because that helps me appreciate everything I got now! What if you were raised in a nice fat house with mad loot? Think of how much more it would take to make you happy today? $50 bucks makes me nut my pants, cause I started with zero! If you were born already a success, then all life would be is trying to keep it all. No goals, no dreams, no nothing except trying to stay where you’re already at... wow, that sounds like fun. And what if you failed? What if you couldn’t maintain your rich life style? You wouldn’t know what the fuck to do! Being poor would probably make you kill yourself cause you wouldn’t know how to handle it! Being born poor is way better. It's way more fun to dream about getting paid and then actually doing it one day. The reward is way, way bigger to you if you make it! Also if you lose it all.. what’s the worst that could happen? You would be poor again, and that ain’t nothing new. Fuck richies. They don’t know shit about life.

Aren’t you a richy now? You gotta have money I'm sure!

Yup. I'm fat paid but hey, like my brother always says... "There’s a big difference between being a millionaire and having a million dollars"... A Millionaire has it in his blood and his mind. He is his money. He's a millionaire! He was probably born with it or something and he needs it to survive. But if you take an average scrub like me and give him a million bucks, he can still be real, he can keep his same clear head and have fun with his loot. Cause the money ain’t in his heart it's just in his hands. He doesn’t depend on it to make him happy. Besides.. fuck you. I'm broke now again anyway. I bought my mom a house, me a house and all my homies got cars. I'm Broke again. So bottom line is this... I might of had a million bucks.. But I was never no fuckin' millionaire, and I never will be. No matter how many millions I get.

Finish about when you were growing up now...

(Sipping his water and slightly choking on it) Me and my brother, fuck! (Choke) Me and my brother Rob were and are super fresh. We never drank or smoked or nothing. I'm not against that shit at all, you can blow crack smoke in my face and I wouldn’t give a half a fuck. We just never got into it ourselves. Never had an urge to. Why start now? What if I liked it and kept at it until I turned into a base head or something? Then I'd have to steel them shoes your wearing.

OK, moving right along..

At 12 or whatever, my mom remarried to this other ninja and we moved to Oak Park, Michigan. Oak Park is cool cause it's really a mixed neighborhood. Mad different races of people all in one neighborhood. Lots of everybody there. Mad fuckin' boring though. Don’t move there, you'll end up squeezing your own neck in boredom. I went to 7th and 8th grade at Best Jr. High in Oak Park. That's where I first met Shaggy. His older brother John went to school with me. Me and John were homies. We hung like nuts in a sac. Shaggy was 2 years younger than us but Shaggy was like a third nut in the sac. We were a rap crew together called the JJ Boys for a second there cause all of our names started with J. I Was called Jagged Joe and Shaggy was called Kangol Joe cause he had a Kangol hat. It was fresh. We used to battle this other rap crew called the Wrecking Crew (No relation to the World Class Wrecking Crew). They were from this fucked up, ghetto ass neighborhood called the township between Oak Park and Ferndale. They were the shit, but they didn’t have any shit on tape. They would just freestyle battle us at school. We had something on cassette though. We met this ninja named "Scratch Master T" from Hazel Park, Mi. He recorded a tape of us rapping with his shifty equipment in his house. He always smoked banana peels. I know that sounds crazy but fuck you.. he did. You can ask him why he smoked banana peels, cause I don’t know why. Anyhow, our little song was the shizznif. I wish I still had it. The song was called 'The Party At The Top Of The Hill". At the time, Run DMC always talked about Adidas and The Beastie Boys would mention White Castle Hamburgers in their songs. So we started mentioning Faygo cause we always had some and it was our own little trademark for our crew. This was the opening line to the song... "We're the JJ Boys on the microphone stand, and we're kickin' it live with a Faygo in our hand" I Still remember that shit.

Is that how the Faygo came about?

I Don’t know mother fucker. Who the fuck cares. The Faygo was always there. Everybody always ask me that. We just drink allot of it cause its mad cheap and they got hundreds of crazy ass flavors. Fuck that question. We used to do graffiti on walls and we were called 'The Krylon Boys", that was our graffiti crew's name. My tag name was Faygo Joe cause I always drank that shit. We sucked though. Shaggy was the only one that could actually draw. Me and John sucked but we tried. We would all start off on a wall together and fifteen minutes later, me and John would be sitting on the curb watching for cars while Shaggy finished. Cause we sucked.

Obviously you never stuck with the JJ Boys...

Naaa, we were more into bullshit. When my brother went into the Army, life got whack. We turned into thugs. We would steal hundreds of hood emblems off cars and wear that shit everywhere. We always tried to sell them at flea markets but I don’t think we ever sold one. We thought we were gangsters but we were just kids trying to look like Run DMC. This kid checked Shaggy's Kangol at school. I Thought Shaggy was going to cry, but he never did. Instead, I did for some reason. (More laughing with his friend Billy Bill).

Kangol hats, hell yeah, I remember them things...

So what, who cares what you remember? This is about me bitch. Where was I? When I was 14 or something my mom moved again, this time from Oak Park, MI to Ferndale MI, the next city over.. I Started going to 9th grade at Ferndale High, but I dropped out half way threw it. Shaggy did the same thing. We both quit school. I Started trying to go again, the next year at Hazel Park high, but fuck that. That only lasted a month. That shit sucked. To this day I'm like fuck school. I don’t recommend that shit to anybody.

Ok... So what did you then do with that impressive 9th grade education?

Well basically I just worked hundreds of whack ass jobs. Dishes, stock, grill, millions of jobs. I Even fuckin' dressed up as a pizza slice and waved at cars driving by. I was trying to get them to come into this new pizza place. They paid me $10 bucks a day. Kids would drive by and throw shit at me, and I would be standing there talking shit and flippin' them off in a pizza slice suit. I was like "Come on bitch! What! Where you at! Bring that shit! Come on!" Pepperonis hangin off me and shit. That was the bomb. Shaggy had the same job. He worked every other day as me. That’s cause they only had one pizza suit. Shaggy's mom knew the guy that gave us the job. We both got fired though. I worked mad jobs but all I really cared about was hanging out at wrestling shows downtown. We wanted to be wrestlers more than anything in the world.

So anyway, me, John and Shaggy all hung out in Downtown Detroit. We always were at every festival at Heart Plaza, Mexican, African, Ho down, Grand Prix, Polish, The Fireworks, whatever. Downtown was just one 15 minute, $1.00 bus ride straight down Woodward. What ever was going on, we was there. And you can bet your ass that we was always at every wrestling show. We knew how to sneak into every building that had wrestling. I even worked at Joe Louis and Cobo as an usher for a month or two, but I got fired cause I stole a big ass box of nacho chips and got caught. We was starving.

Ok.. and then..

Hey bitch... you said you wanted every last detail, that's what you gettin'. So.. while we were hanging out behind Cobo and Joe Louis Arena's wrestling shows every month looking for autographs we met a lot of ninjas just like us. That's how we met Rudy (The Rude Boy). Rudy lived on the southwest side of Detroit. Hanging out with him we met people and saw things that would change our lives forever.

Southwest was home to me in many ways. Everyone was on some whole other shit. Everyone in southwest never cared about what kind of car your fuckin' mom drove. It seemed like everyone was on Foodstamps. You never had to hide them and get all embarrassed to spend them. Southwest has the biggest mix of people in the world. How much money your mom had was never the issue there because everyone was all in the same boat. In the burbs you got richies, poor kids, everyone, but in the city it seems like everybody's all the same... broke, but there all over it. It's not an issue. We hung out in southwest forever.

So Rude Boy has been there from the start?

Yup. That's right ninja. When I was 15 or 16, I moved in with Rudy's family for a while and we both worked odd jobs all over the place. Macdonald's, Wendy's, washing dishes, who ever the fuck would hire us. About a year later, Me, Shaggy, and John started rapping again but just fucking around on paper. Our dream was still to be wrestlers. Gang shit was what everyone was into in Southwest, so we started our own gang called ICP, Inner City Posse. That started this crazy ass violent faze that we all went threw. We sucked as an organized gang, we were more like a posse of homies that were just thuggin'. We used to stomp the shit out of kids all day. My foot has penetrated many an ass, I'll tell ya. I Don’t know what the hell we was thinking, but we used to stomp somebody down at least once every day it seemed like. We got stomped down allot to, I can’t front. There was only like 10 of us in our gang, sometimes less and sometimes more. We used to mostly hang out in and around southwest, but we would always mob out to River Rough, Ecorse, Inkster, and Dearborn, mostly downriver. My sister moved info a fucked up apartment in Taylor, and so we hung out there alot to. I mostly lived back and forth from Detroit to Taylor, to Ferndale back to Detroit. I was a straight up thug. We stole tons of car stereos from everywhere and we would sell them to our homies. In between stealing car stereos and sometimes even cars, we would work more fucked up jobs. We stole a car one time that said blue eyes on the front license plate. We gripped it to a Radio Shack to get something and when we came back out the police were already at the car. That shit was close... hey, keep that shit on the down low though. If fact don't even print that shit. Just edit that whole part out.

Don’t worry homey, I got you covered. Continue on...

Shaggy and his brother John were the masters of stealing. They would steal expensive books, jackets, CD's and shit and then take them back to a different store for the loot. Anything. Food, toothpaste, fuckin' Ironing boards, fuckin Chia pets, what ever the fuck they wanted. They would just walk right out with that shit like nothing. I can’t front, I was always to scared to do that shit. I never stole nothing from stores. Only parked cars at night or whatever. I would’ve even go in the stores with them. I'd just wait in the car and listen to Awesome Dre tapes. (If you don’t know who that is, you better do your Detroit rap homework)

Have you ever been in Jail?

Nope, never.

Really... or are you kidding.

Your a fuckin' anus. I Been in and out of jail a million times. I never did a long stretch though. Just a few days here, a few weeks there. I'm a good kid ya know?

What about your first time in jail, what was it for?

(Drinking his water and spitting if out on the carpet) I was working at this car wash when this kid named Paul that I used to go to school with in the 6th grade came threw the car wash. He recognized me and we started talking. He said that he lived out in this city called Milford now and they were having this big ass party. That night me, Shaggy, Rudy and my other homey Nate all went to the party out in Milford. Boom! There was mad bitches everywhere. I Met this bitch and fucked her that night. I Think I tell in love with her right then cause skins back then was a very rare thing for my scrubby ass.

After that we rode back out to Milford like 100 times. About a month later the bitch cheated on me and then told me about it over the phone. So I called her back later and told her I was going to kill her and her family. You know, the manly thing to do right? Well she got scared and thought I was really going to. She knew we was gang thugs, plus we used to play it up extra hard around her like we was some real ass mobsters or something. Her mom called the police and I had a warrant for malicious threatening phone calls. About a month later we got pulled over in Hazel Park and my warrant landed me in the clink. I Finally got bailed out for $100 bucks 3 days later. That was my first time. I wasn't even really going to do it! I might have killed her maybe, but I wouldn’t of done the family! Ya know? So then they put me on this probation that said I cant go near that bitch and I was supposed to stay out of Milford city limits. My homey Paul still lived out there so I went out there to hang with him alot. Well get this, next thing you know Paul is going out with the bitch that put me in jail! We rode out there and beat his ass right in his school. We mobbed right info his class room. I did a total of 2 months in the Oakland County Jail for that shit. I Was in jail over Christmas and New years and all that shit. I was such a sap ass bitch. All that over some dumb fuckin' bitch. I was 17 and dumb as hell.

After that I was like fuck Milford and them richy burbs all along. I Never even left the city after that shit.

So Did you ever get to become a wrestler?

Yes. I can do anything I want to. I sooner or later accomplish all my fuckin' dreams cause I ain't no sap no more. I kind of had to sneak my way in to wrestling though. I started wrestling on some independent shows around Detroit when I was 18, but I sucked at it. I had to lie and tell them that I was trained at a wrestling school down in Texas so they would let me wrestle but really I trained my damn self. Me and Shaggy and his brother were some back yard wrestling ninja as. We mastered the whole sport. I Used to practice on this bitch I was going out with. I Fucked her up bad a few times. She was crazy as hell, we was fighting and she stabbed me once, I knocked her out. We was fuckin again that night though. My first match was at Azteca Hall in Southwest Detroit against a ninja named Irish Mickey Doyle. My wrestling name at the time was Corporal Daniels. I wore army shit to the ring cause my brother would always send me that shit to me for free. He was still in the Army and Army boots were easier to find that wrestling boots. So I was an Army, wrestler, ninja guy. I was whack as fuck but at least I was doing it. I thought I was the shit. I Wrestled Al Snow on a show once and the news paper gave it a 4 star match. I still have the clipping. Now Al Snow is a big WWF star and shit. That’s the bomb.

So when did your rapping take off?

Just like wrestling, when ever I really got info something big, I wanted to do if myself. NWA and Easy E continued to grow on me and then when Awesome Dre came out... BOOM! I was hooked. Here was a guy from Detroit schooling the nation with gangsta shit. Next thing you know, I was a gangsta rapper. Southwest was my Compton. I made a song called "Southwest Song" (Remade on 1993's Ringmaster Album) on a cheap ass radio and gave it away to all of our homies and all of there homies. Everyone seemed like they loved it. At St. Ann's Church on Vernor, they would have a festival once a year, I gave away about 100 dubbed copies of that song that year. Everyone told me it was the shit. I was mad geeked. I thought I was Sir J-A-Lot or something.

After that, I made a whole album on a Karaoke machine with this kid named D-Lyrical. My boys introduced me to him. We did an album together called "Intelligence and violence". He was the intelligent guy and I was the Violent guy. His mom always yelled at me and hated me cause I cussed so much and she said I rapped so loud you could hear me from outside. I never even really knew this kid, I lust used him for his Karaoke machine. Then my crazy bitch bought me my own Karaoke machine. It cost her $125 bucks. Then I had my own. That was the last time D-Lyrical's wack ass ever saw me. It was just violence from then on. Fuck the intelligent shit, he sucked anyway. Fuck him and his mom. I should drive by there with a megaphone and bust my dirty raps in his driveway. Fuckin' I should go back over there and set up some speakers stacks on his lawn and cuss my fuckin' ass oft.

Ok, let me relax myself... so Shaggy and his brother John re-joined my new rap crew and we ran shit on the world of Karaoke rapping over other peoples instrumentals.

So that's how ICP was born?

ICP was born when we started our gang, bitch. I told you already. Even though sucked as a gang. We were more like a click of homies trying to be a gang. We spray painted that shit everywhere so people would think there was 100's of us. We never sold dope or sold guns or anything. Maybe we sold a little bit of weed but that’s it. We were just street bums that loved each other like family. That's what we are to this day. My whole road crew today is made up of most of the same ninjas that we used to ride with back then. Rude Boy, Jump Steady, Nate The Mac, Billy Bill, Chucky, Stephan and all them ninjas.

ICP as rappers really first took off when we made this fresh Karaoke album called "Basement Cuts". It was the shit. We started selling them everywhere. Detroit, Ferndale, Taylor, Oak Park, especially down river. Everywhere. We sold it for $2 bucks a tape. We sold mad copies of it in the city. Probably something like 200 copies total. People would ride there bikes up to our porch in Southwest and by them oft us all the time. Ninjas we didn’t even know would ride up and ask us for a copy. It was the shit. My brother was still in the Army at the time. He was in the dessert Storm War. I sent him mad copies too. He and his homies were felling us that we were the shit and we should go to a real studio and hook if up. He sent us some money to help. He also told us that his homey from Oak Park owned a record store with his brother in Roseville MI, and we should take some copies up to him and see it he'll sell it at his store. So we did. That's when we met Alex Abbiss. He was the ninja my brother knew. Alex was the freshest mother fucker we ever met. He would fell them kids at his store what ever they wanted to hear just to get them to buy it. Me and Shaggy would hide in the back room and listen to him sell our tapes. He sold alot of copies of Basement Cuts, we couldn’t dub them off fast enough.

After Alex sold a bunch of copies of our basement tape at the store, he asked us if we wanted a manager... We needed him more than a sac needs nuts in if. We said "yezzzzzes byyafch". Alex told us that the only way we'd ever make it is to do it our damn selves. Fuck sending demos to record labels, we just have to create our own label. Then we'd sell enough records ourselves on our own label, to prove to the big labels that were the shit. Then they'll come to us! So right then and there we created Psychopathic Records. If was Just me, Alex, Shaggy and his brother John. Shaggy grabbed a piece of paper and drew the hatchet man right then and there in Alex's basement and the rest is history.

Tell me that history, continue ninja...

What the fuck, ninjas can read Forgotten Freshness credits and here this shit. We went info a studio and recorded our first professional tape. It was a four song maxi single called "Dog Beats". We went under our gang's name Inner City Posse. We had alot to learn about running our own label and putting shit out ourselves. We didn't know shit. Nothing. There was this rapper starting to get mad big in Detroit named Esham. Esham and his brother were selling mad records on his own lable called "Reel Life Productions". They were on top it seemed, so we watched how they did it. They were every bit our roll models. They were the shit. They had the whole city locked down. Esham did these satanic style raps and he had every one scarred. Every record store swung oft his nuts. We wanted Psychopathic Records to be just like Reel Life but better. In the beginning, what ever they did, we did. When I look back at that shit now I wanna kick myself. We should have picked an Ice Cube or somebody to follow instead of a big local guy. Cause we spent years frying to be the biggest in Detroit instead of the biggest in the world. That was a mistake that we went on to make for something like 4 more years.

What kid of reaction did Dog Beats get?

A shifty one. we pressed 500 copies on cassette our first run. It took us forever to sell them. Life started to change for us all drastically. It started to become our goal to make if. We all had jobs now and hustles on the side and all of our money went into Psychopathic Records. I Made my crazy bitch poor every dime she had into us. I Moved to the east side of Detroit for a minute, with this kid named Eric (Greeze E). Ninjas in southwest were starting to player hate us cause we were starting to make some noise. They broke out our windows and shit twice. If seemed like everybody in the city was against us at the time, but years later we found out if was just one crew of weak bitches, but that’s a whole other story. I was working at St. Andrews Hall downtown as a security guy, I Think that’s how we met Eric. I watch shifty. band after shifty band come play there every fuckin night. Every band that came to Detroit all had one thing in common, they all sucked. The hardest thing about that job was watching all them shifty ass bands.

After Dog Beats what happened next?

We had just started to record Gangsta Codes which was going to be the follow up album to the Dog Beats single tape when everything in my life 360o. Just right at that point, the Dark Carnival came into our world and life was never the same again after that. We went back info the studio and canned that gangsta codes shit. The new album will now be called 'The Carnival Of Carnage" and if will be the 1sf in a series of 6 Joker's Cards. Ninjas all around us thought we were stupid as hell. We put down the guns and picked up our axes as tar as the gangsta shit goes. I Didn’t give a fuck about anything else again except the Dark Carnival. It's the same today. People all around us laughed and criticized everything we did. After we recorded halt of Carnival Of Carnage, Shaggy's brother John quit the group and left us dry. The dues was just to much for him to pay, and to this day he'll admit that. We were fucked. We were mad broke, we needed his money plus ours to press the record. Plus with him gone it was mad wack cause now we got half an album with this ninja rapping on it and he ain’t even in the group no more. Greeze E took his place for about a month but that shit was short lived too. Shaggy was working at this Coney island and I was working midnights at this wack ass gas station and Alex was still at the store. The Dark Carnival was behind us in spirit but they didn’t help pay shit! (Laughing hysterically with Billy Bill) With John gone, it would of seemed frantic but looking at two things we pulled threw it. No.1 everything happens for a reason. No 2. He kind of sucked a little bit anyway. He says he didn't get this whole carnival shit and he thought what we was doing was wack. So, Alex, me and Shaggy were alone facing the world with an entire album full of crazy psychotic clown rap. We saved and saved and we finally did it. Carnival Of Carnage was ready to hit the streets and the mighty count down was set to begin.

So Carnival Of Carnage came out and the count down was on?

Yep. The sky was red that day. I Mean that. Anybody who remembers that day will fell you, the sky was red. Blood red. It was an eerie day. Very eerie. The First Jokers card was out and the Carnival was on it's way. Esham and his brother had some new competition on the block. Psychopathic records had begun it's mission. We even saved our dollars for months during the recording of Carnival Of Carnage and paid Esham and Detroit's other star at the time, Kid Rock, to do songs with us on it. We knew that they would help us get our album into way more record stores than Dog Beats got into. But even with Detroit's 2 biggest rap stars making guest appearances on the album, still it seemed like nobody really wanted it. Maybe a few stores but that was it. But none the less if was out and if was on.

No matter how hard the times got I felt so good. All my life I never had shit to do. I never gave a fuck about life cause it just seemed like everybody just loved to always dog Joe Bruce. But now I was with my long time homey Shaggy and we felt this calling. Something was calling us. Us! Scrubby ass Joe Bruce and qui ass Shaggy were the ones chosen to spread this powerful message. We were the men for the job. But fuck all that shit, just with all that inside, rapping was the only thing we were good at. The whole game of making it seemed like most people could never fake it. Most people would quit. But hard times were something that we were used to. We could handle this. And here was this other ninja that was willing to take the whole journey with us. Alex believed in us. Why? How? Fuck it. Who cares. All signs pointed up so me and Shaggy weren’t passing shit bye. Fuck that, we jumped on the wagons and were gone forever.


 INTERVIEWS 

Monday, November 16, 1998

WWF • RAW • ICP • Oddities • New Age Outlaws • XPac • 11/16/98

 JUGGALOGICAL  
 WRESTLING 


Oddities with Insane Clown Posse vs. New Age Outlaws & Xpac. This was on Monday Night Raw 11-16-98. I do not own any of this

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