Call it rebranding or re-imaging or whatever you like.
But the notorious Detroit horror-rap duo Insane Clown Posse is working to shed its bad-guy image, The Detroit News reports. An FBI report in 2011 labeled its fans, known as Juggalos," gangs. The agency claimed they were involved in felony assaults, thefts, robberies and drug sales.
Adam Graham of the Detroit News reports that the pair — leader Joseph “Violent J” Bruce and his sidekick Joey “Shaggy 2 Dope” Utsler — is fed up with being seen as villains in the music business and getting treated like a sideshow attraction.
“The FBI ain’t just gonna come (dismiss) our legacy and say, ‘They’re just a gang.’ That’s our legacy you’re talking about,” Bruce tells the News.
As part of that image changer, the group threw a benefit concert last month for Aaron Spencer, a devoted fan who died in January due to liver failure. The group has also teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to try and wipe out its designation as a gang.
“Us fighting it is more important than us winning it,” says Bruce, 41. “If we don’t fight it, it shows we don’t (care) what happens to our fans, and that’s terrible. The victory here would be to get the names off the list, and then slowly let people know we have a legacy here.”
The News writes:
These are transitional times for the grease-painted duo, whose circus of a career stretches 20-plus years. Feeling the pinch of depleted record sales, the group has undergone a reorganization of its business, recently cutting two-thirds of its staff at its Farmington Hills-based record company, Psychopathic Records.
And the group is still paying back vendors from last year’s Gathering of the Juggalos, the lowest-attended event in the 14-year history of ICP’s infamous annual fan festival, which left them $700,000 in the hole. But this year the Gathering has a new home, and ICP has a new outlook.
-- A.L.
