Insane Clown Posse at Marquee Theatre

Part rap group, part societal phenomenon, Insane Clown Posse amassed an unlikely cult around their cartoonish and critically loathed horrorcore rap styles. Loosely connected themes of psychopathic clowns, Faygo soda, and the importance of friendship were enough for thousands of die-hard fans to don clown make up and proclaim themselves “juggalos,” part of a community of Insane Clown Posse superfans drawn to their lowest-common-denominator humor and shock-factor rhymes. Staunchly independent, ICP only had brief and controversy-heavy associations with major labels around the time of their 1997 album The Great Milenko, but spent most of their decades of existence releasing their albums (as well as the music of an extended family of artists) on their own Psychopathic Records label. The group’s grassroots approach resulted in millions of album sales, with a creative and commercial peak around the time of their highly conceptual late-’90s/early-2000s output. A loose narrative exposed over the course of several albums — records like 1995’s Riddle Box and 1999’s The Amazing Jeckel Brothers — was presented as different “joker’s cards,” culminating with the spiritual reveal of 2002’s The Wraith: Shangri-La. At that point, however, the wicked clowns were the center of a global counterculture, and they charged ahead for decades to come with releases like 2007’s The Tempest, and the unveiling of a second deck of joker’s cards with albums like 2011’s Bang! Pow! Boom! and 2021’s Yum Yum Bedlam.

Down to a duo, ICP were originally formed in 1989 as a hardcore Detroit rap group called Inner City Posse. After combusting in 1991, the only members left, Violent J (born Joseph Bruce) and Shaggy 2 Dope (born Joseph Utsler), slightly altered their name to reflect the fact that they had been visited by the Carnival Spirit, who ordered them to carry the word of an impending apocalypse by touring the nation and releasing six “joker cards” (popularly known as LPs) with successive revelations of the final judgment. The first, Carnival of Carnage, appeared in 1992 on their own Psychopathic Records label. The group became notorious in Detroit’s underground scene, but several tours around the region failed to ignite much more than the rage of community leaders.

Down to a duo, ICP were originally formed in 1989 as a hardcore Detroit rap group called Inner City Posse. After combusting in 1991, the only members left, Violent J (born Joseph Bruce) and Shaggy 2 Dope (born Joseph Utsler), slightly altered their name to reflect the fact that they had been visited by the Carnival Spirit, who ordered them to carry the word of an impending apocalypse by touring the nation and releasing six “joker cards” (popularly known as LPs) with successive revelations of the final judgment. The first, Carnival of Carnage, appeared in 1992 on their own Psychopathic Records label. The group became notorious in Detroit’s underground scene, but several tours around the region failed to ignite much more than the rage of community leaders.

On Halloween 2000, the group issued its sixth album, which apparently did not count (as all the other albums had) as a joker card (in the ICP fantasy world, the sixth joker card was supposed to signal the apocalypse). Similar to Guns N’ Roses‘ Use Your Illusion, the album was released in two completely different, separate versions, titled Bizzar and Bizaar. Finally needing to live up to the years of hype, 2002’s The Wraith: Shangri-La revealed that the hidden message of their music was always to follow God and make it to Heaven. Considering the murder fantasies of “Beverly Kills 50187” and the necrophiliac overtones of “Cemetery Girl,” this may have been a shock to longtime fans.

In August 2004, the band released the sixth and final joker card, Hell’s Pit, in two separate editions; both had the same CD but were packed with different DVDs. Nevertheless, the Dark Carnival wasn’t fully shuttered. Spring 2005 found ICP hyping a new direction for the mythology, to be revealed with the May release of Calm. The EP also prepped Insane Clown Posse’s devoted fan base for the sixth annual Gathering of the Juggalos that July. Their 2007 effort, The Tempest, found the duo reuniting with producer Mike E. Clark, the man behind the first four joker card releases. Clark stuck around for their 2009 Bang! Pow! Boom! album. That same year, the duo presented a second feature-length film. This time exploring a western motif, Big Money Rustlas featured the clowns in gunslinger garb and was again released outside of theaters.

Featuring Freshness, a two-disc collection of the group’s work with other artists, arrived in 2011. A year later, the conceptual The Mighty Death Pop focused on their detractors and other “certified hoes,” with Clark returning as producer. In 2015, The Marvelous Missing Link (Lost) landed as the first of that year’s two albums, while The Marvelous Missing Link (Found) landed later in the year. In 2017, while recording the next joker card, the duo released a pair of solo albums, with Shaggy 2 Dope‘s F.T.F.O.M.F. arriving months before Violent J‘s American Life/Lives. In mid-2018, the group announced that their 15th studio album, Fearless Fred Fury, would be released in October of that year, but it was ultimately pushed back until February 2019. An eight-song EP, Flip the Rat, was scheduled for release on the same day. In advance of the group’s next studio album, they released the eight-song EP Yum Yum’s Lure in February of 2021, eventually delivering a full album, Yum Yum Bedlam, on the last day of October that same year. The album represented the fifth joker’s card in the second deck of the ongoing Dark Carnival saga, and included guest appearances from Roadside Ghost and Vinnie Dombroski.