Jugganauts: The Best of Icp

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About Jugganauts: The Best Of Icp

About the Artist The midway is lit. The rides are on. The carneys are barking from the game stands and the sideshows are in full, glorious operation. The Insane Clown Posse is back in town, and if you thought the dynamic duo from Detroit was bizarre before, they're doubly so now. Are you scared yet? Bizzar and Bizaar are the two -- that's right, two -- new albums from ICP. We're talking two separate 12-track journeys into the unique psychoses of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, as in-your-face and uncompromising as ever, but with a few surprises along the way. Bizaar and Bizzar are easily distinguished by their individual, over-sized packages, each of which is laden with photos and even games to play while the everyone's favorite wicked clowns are raising hell on the speakers. Just don't land on the game square that designates you as a herpes carrier and sends you back a few spaces. "This record is really, really relaxed, and it's fun," says Violent J. "The reason it's fun is because we stopped trying to reach the mainstream audience. In other words, instead of trying to convert everybody into listening to our shit, this one's just for the juggalos out there." There are plenty of those, too. Over the course of the past decade and five albums - Carnival of Carnage (1991), Ringmaster (1993), Riddlebox (1995), The Great Milenko (1997) and The Amazing Jeckel Brothers (1999), plus countless singles and EPs -- ICP's juggalo fan base has expanded like a hungry colony that can't get enough of their favorite wicked clowns. They regularly make ICP's releases platinum sellers, and thousands of them trekked to suburban Detroit last summer for the first annual Gathering of Juggalos, a two-day festival of everything ICP. So when ICP set out to make Bizzar and Bizaar with longtime producer and chief collaborator Mike E. Clark, the juggalos - "saluted on the albums as "the certain, chosen few" - were the first and only thing on their minds. "We went in to record with no pressure," says J, "just knowing this was for our own little world. We're never gonna sell 10 million records, never gonna get nominated for Grammys, never gonna make the cover of Billboard -- unless we pay for it. Nobody is gonna say 'Look at the standards these guys have set. Look at how well they provide for their fans.'" "So on these records we said 'Fuck it. Let's make a double album, pack it full of the shit everybody loves us for, shit all the juggalos like. Let's give 'em that in fat doses.' That's what we did." J is being -- believe it or not -- a bit modest. ICP never goes into the studio to repeat itself, so Bizzar and Bizaar continue the creative growth the duo has pursued ever since childhood friends J and Shaggy started slapping on the grease paint during 1991. As producer Clark says, "It's a little more sophisticated. The writing is better. The tracks are better -- but still very ICP." With only a modicum of guests this time -- including ICP cohorts Twiztid and legendary Detroit rapper Esham -- the songs on Bizzar and Bizaar run the gamut from straight-up hip-hop to rocking guitar tracks and ICP's old skool horrorcore. Twists? This crop of songs has a doozy in "Let's Go All the Way," a remake of the 1986 pop hit by Sly Fox recorded with the Detroit rock band Perpetual Hype Machine. "It's just a crack-up," says J. "I'm singing on that, but...I changed all the lyrics in the song except for the chorus." "Radio Star" finds J and Shaggy taking their shot at radio formats by trying their hand at different genres of radio music in a faux effort to get played. "Please Don't Hate Me" mines a sweet acoustic guitar arrangement under some typically wicked ICP lyrics that wreak a little vengeance on a particularly disrespectful hip-hop colleague. "Homey Baby Mam Drama" is the kind of nursery rhyme you won't put on any toddler's tapes, while tracks like "My Axe," "Still Stabbin'" and "What" slam with the kind of ferocity the juggalos expect and demand from their heroes. "What I