The Shrine

No, seriously: Insane Clown Posse: And God created controversy; America's nastiest rappers in shocking revelation – they've been evangelical Christians all along

This explains the Miracles video.

We watch the video for another few seconds: "It becomes apparent that Shaggy and J consider any understanding of the actual workings of these 'miracles' to be corrosive. To them, knowledge is seen as a threat… For ICP a true understanding of 'fucking rainbows' would reduce them to, as Keats put it, 'the dull catalogue of common things'."

Violent J shakes his head sorrowfully. "Who looks at the stars at night and says, 'Oh, those are gaseous forms of plutonium'?" he says. "No! You look at the stars and you think, 'Those are beautiful.'"

Mostly hydrogen and helium, but hey, let's all remain ignorant! These guys are worse than being stupid - which they are. They're aggressively ignorant.

I extremely dislike ICP. Also, you can't say one thing and act another way.

That kind of subtlety is lost on these guys.

"So all those unpleasant characters in the songs," I ask, "like the narrator in I Stuck Her With My Wang, they're examples of people you shouldn't be?"

"Huh?" Violent J says.

"Well, it's very unpleasant," I say. "'I stuck her with my wang. She hit me in the balls. I grabbed her by her neck. And I bounced her off the walls. She said it was an accident and then apologised. But I still took my elbow and blackened both her eyes.' That's clearly a song about domestic violence. So your Christian message is... don't be like that man?"

"Huh?" Violent J repeats, mystified.

There's a silence.

"I Stuck Her With My Wang is funny," Violent J says. "Jokes. Jokes, man. Jokes. Jokes. Jokes. It's just a ridiculous scenario. Silly stories, man. Silly stories. What's she doing kicking him in the balls? We find it funny."

Not the brightest bulbs.

Are we sure this is legit and not them trying to get some kind of attention? If it is legit, then what Mully said.

This thread needs more Sine.

Lox wrote:Are we sure this is legit and not them trying to get some kind of attention? If it is legit, then what Mully said.

I can't be certain. But, watch this.

Eric wrote:This thread needs more Sine.

With a dash of Don. Posts are far too short right now, need to get that average size WAY up :-)

Kupek wrote:No, seriously: Insane Clown Posse: And God created controversy; America's nastiest rappers in shocking revelation – they've been evangelical Christians all along

Ummm, duh? They practically said that in the last Joker's Card. Hell's Pit was released in 2004, SIX YEARS AGO!

The Unveiling wrote:This ain`t no fuckin fan club, It aint about making a buck!
Don't buy our fuckin action figures bitch, I dont give a fuck!!
It aint About Violent J or Shaggy, the Butterfly or Seventeen.
When we speak of Shangri-La, what you think we mean?
Truth is we follow GOD!!!!
We've always been behind Him!
The Carnival is GOD and may all Juggalos find Him!

May The Juggalos Find god!
May The Juggalos Find god!
May The Juggalos Find god!
He's out there, He's Out there!

Not to mention all of the talk about heaven and hell in about half of their songs. Shit, that's part of the reason why I like them. I may not agree with the whole God/Heaven/Hell stuff, but I like the fact that they are trying to promote goodness under this veil using an inventive concept of The Dark Carnival. It was kind of this weird religion that was basically just Christianity under the surface, but it appealed to kind of outcasts that would listen to them. It's a shitton better than Dr. Dre or Snoop Dogg or Too Short talking about pimping hoes, drivebys, and shooting the police. Kids listen to that shit and think "wow, that's pretty cool". (Yeah, I'm going there, but I'm not talking about banning albums or any shit like that.)

Of course, I like the goofy shit they talk about too, and the backbeats sounds a lot better than a lot of the rappers using 80's synths that sound like a cat being strangled.

Fuck, I don't even listen to these guys enough to try to defend them so much here...

Kupek wrote:That kind of subtlety is lost on these guys.

"So all those unpleasant characters in the songs," I ask, "like the narrator in I Stuck Her With My Wang, they're examples of people you shouldn't be?"

"Huh?" Violent J says.

"Well, it's very unpleasant," I say. "'I stuck her with my wang. She hit me in the balls. I grabbed her by her neck. And I bounced her off the walls. She said it was an accident and then apologised. But I still took my elbow and blackened both her eyes.' That's clearly a song about domestic violence. So your Christian message is... don't be like that man?"

"Huh?" Violent J repeats, mystified.

There's a silence.

"I Stuck Her With My Wang is funny," Violent J says. "Jokes. Jokes, man. Jokes. Jokes. Jokes. It's just a ridiculous scenario. Silly stories, man. Silly stories. What's she doing kicking him in the balls? We find it funny."

Not the brightest bulbs.

It's an act. They just didn't give a shit about a reporter from The Guardian, who's probably never heard a ICP album in his life, trying to take lyrics of their goofy songs, and suddenly turn it into a referendum about their message. It would be like a Fox News reporter taking a NIN song (say, anything from Downward Spiral) and saying that Trent Reznor must be a hateful and spiteful creature that wants to fuck everybody in the world and wants all of his fans to shoot themselves in the head.

The songs like that are so goofy that you can't really take it seriously. Then they mix those up with songs that talk about Heaven/Hell/etc. If you ever listened to a ICP album (which you won't because you've already made up your mind about them), it's easy to tell the difference between the two. ICP's been doing this dance of "Violence is art" for years, combined with the Heaven/Hell messages. It's the former that everybody sees, and the latter than nobody (except somebody who would bother to listen to their albums) even notices.

Don't believe me about the H/H songs? Here's a short list:

Killing Fields (Hell)
Halls of Illusions (People that deserve Hell)
Pass Me By (Heaven)
How Many Times (not H/H, but mostly about injustice and stupid shit people do)

And that's based on my (very) limited knowledge of their albums. Actually, the Wikipedia article on the Dark Carnival is very interesting reading, and explains a lot of this stuff.

Also, I like KnowYourMeme's take on their Miracles video:



EDIT: I'm done. Thanks for robbing me of my evening because you guys are too populist to care. It's easy to hate on ICP because everybody else does. Again, I don't even listen to their music that much.

SineSwiper wrote:Ummm, duh? They practically said that in the last Joker's Card. Hell's Pit was released in 2004, SIX YEARS AGO!

Yup, you caught me. I know very little about ICP. I really don't care much about the "violence as art" thing, as you call it. My biggest objection is their aggressive ignorance. But if you have another explanation for their "magnets, how do they work?" attitude, then I'd love to hear it.

SineSwiper wrote:It's easy to hate on ICP because everybody else does.

You slipped that "because" in there. There's an alternate clause that could go there: "It's easy to hate on ICP because they really are that bad."

Kupek wrote:Yup, you caught me. I know very little about ICP. I really don't care much about the "violence as art" thing, as you call it. My biggest objection is their aggressive ignorance. But if you have another explanation for their "magnets, how do they work?" attitude, then I'd love to hear it.

It's a song about the magic and wonderment of things in the world. The whole scientist thing is the fact that any explanations destroy that magic, or in many cases, just confuses people.

Hell, most people DON'T know how magnets work. I know there's a magnetic field around magnets, but I have no idea how they got that way or why there's a field around them, or why a magnetic field splits in two when you cut it in half, or why there's always a north or south pole? Does anybody else here know anything beyond that?

Plus, people tend to think of their songs too literally. Do you think they actually believe in murdering people with an axe? They are clowns. They are trolls before the term troll was invented. They probably picked this video because the uneducated "I know very little about ICP" masses would say A) "WTF?! I thought talked about axe murdering and stuff?!" and B) "They don't like scientists?! I'm going to post an angry YouTube reply right now!". Congratulations, you've been trolled.

My biggest objection to your post is YOUR aggressive ignorance on ICP. Fine, maybe you don't know a lot about ICP, but maybe you should have looked it up on, say, Wikipedia, before going "OMG, ICP likes God? WHARRRGARBL!!"

ICP fans commit assault against women

SineSwiper wrote:

Kupek wrote:Yup, you caught me. I know very little about ICP. I really don't care much about the "violence as art" thing, as you call it. My biggest objection is their aggressive ignorance. But if you have another explanation for their "magnets, how do they work?" attitude, then I'd love to hear it.

It's a song about the magic and wonderment of things in the world. The whole scientist thing is the fact that any explanations destroy that magic, or in many cases, just confuses people.

And that is what I call aggressive ignorance: valuing wonder for its own sake. It values ignorance. Purposefully not learning something to retain the awe of not knowing.

Magnets: you're probably aware that electrons have negative charge, and protons have positive charge. If an atom lose electrons, the atom at a whole is positively charged. But that alone is not enough for what we call magnetism: there are metals with free electrons that aren't ferromagnetic. The orientation of the atoms in such metals are random, and any macro phenomenon is cancelled out. What's different in ferromagnetic materials is the electro-magnetic fields of the individual atoms tend to align themselves in the same way. Tada, observable magnetism.

I think you give ICP too much credit. You see them saying stupid things, and you assume "Oh, they must actually be smart. They have a hidden agenda I'm unaware of to... I dunno what, but it's there." I see them saying stupid things and I assume they're stupid.

And I'm not being aggressively ignorant about ICP. I was just plain ignorant. One, I looked up stuff after it dawned on me that this was old news - that surprised me, so I wanted to make sure that was true. I actually watched most of that video I linked, because I was curious what their actual music sounded like - not actually bad, just generic guitar and beats with rapping. No music ability could save those lyrics, though. And, ICP doesn't matter. I think learning about how our universe works actually matters.

BAAAAM! Sine comes out of nowhere with a flurry of sentences and paragraphs to save the day! On top of that, he awakens the normally dormant and very short-and-to-the-point Kupek to take over for the nowhere-to-be-seen Don and they layeth the smacketh down on the short, one-sentence replies and show all The Shriners how it's done!

Kupek wrote:And I'm not being aggressively ignorant about ICP. I was just plain ignorant. One, I looked up stuff after it dawned on me that this was old news - that surprised me, so I wanted to make sure that was true. I actually watched most of that video I linked, because I was curious what their actual music sounded like - not actually bad, just generic guitar and beats with rapping. No music ability could save those lyrics, though. And, ICP doesn't matter. I think learning about how our universe works actually matters.

Well, you're not really the target audience. (I'm not really the target audience; I just find them amusing and unique.) I didn't say the music was intelligent, but the direction and style is unusual. Again, you don't see too many rappers go into the direction of preaching, and they try (or tried) to be somewhat subtle about it to keep their audience interested.

And yes, I think they are smarter than their music or their persona appears to be. They just don't give a shit half the time.

/Lay down in the street and trip a semi with your neck...

Kupek wrote:Insane Clown Posse are evangelical Christians

After listening to the video Miracles for 2 minutes.... I think what you really meant to say wasn't "Evangelical Christians", but that you really meant "retards".

I watched the "Miracles" music video and then watched the SNL spoof of it. The real video was funnier.