Insane Clown Posse's song about 'Miracles' called worst song ever

[sadhatter]

Well I don't know about Limbaugh, but I don't think Bill O'reilly is the product of a mating between a two headed man and a fortune teller Esmarelda Zella

If you look at the lyrics over the years:

Everybody tripped and called me the clown devil boy
Child of the witch heffer...whatever
Tied me up, burned me and threw stones
Had a few scrapes and cuts, smokey nuts
After that they started bowing and ****
Praying at me, you know how them primitives get
I said, "Get off my dick, I ain't a savior,
I'm what you call a juggalo and all I want is my flavor
Four simple things in this bitch, before I die...

The religious aspect was always there. I think this is a culmination of years of effort.

It's brilliant.

To add a bit of an addendum to that, the supernatural in general is a theme that is heavy in icp's music. From voodoo to faith healing to the d and d universe.

And i doubt anyone would assume Shaggs can throw a fireball ( let alone up someones punk ***).

 

[sadhatter]

It may be equivalent, but it's more than fair. Unless the album this song is from is supposed to be a coherent whole (like "Tommy", or "The Wall", for example), then the people doing the "chunking up" are the band. They made an individual song, and released an individual music video for it. I would say it's their fault, yeah.

And if all their "real fans" get it and the people that don't are just those non-fan outsiders, then the band shouldn't be complaining anyway.

um dude, all icp's albums are meant to be taken as concept albums, that is one of their ( for lack of a better term) things.

This one for example is about a being named "bang pow boom" and the rounding up of a group of people such as child molesters, corrupt priests, and other assorted over the top villians, to sacrifice to said being.

I mean that has been one of icp's things from the beginning, the entire jokers card thing, hell they even released 2 c.d.s that were one story.

Think of it, with a library of hundreds of songs, people think they can tell satire immediately with one random song? That would be like reading, what a couple paragraphs of the 9/11 commission report and making a judgement on it? Or watching about 30 (random.) seconds of Blazing saddles and being able to tell the same thing.

 

[sadhatter]

Yes. If SNL makes a parody of your attempt at satire, that means your attempt failed.

Even failures can make money, of course.

Yeah because snl is at the height of its wit and popularity. Same thing with mtv, when i want biting social commentary and grade a writing those are where i go.

 

[sadhatter]

The emergent topic is the societal impact of the song; how it perpetuates this circus of stupid.

To me we could do the same thing with a lot of bands.

Kiss- If we all rock and rolled all night and partied every day nothing would get done. That is stupid.

The rolling stones - Why the hell would i want to paint a red door black, if its red its probably red for a reason. And why would i want the sea to go a deeper blue, that would probably indicate some form of imbalance.

Acdc- I don't care how big your balls are.

The ramones - People can't come back to life and neither can pets.
If your so sedated you need a wheelchair, you should probably go to rehab.

Beastie boys - Women are more than just "girls " do do you laundry, etc.

Black sabbath - Magnetic fields do not turn people to steel.

Iron butterfly - One cannot go to the garden of eden, let alone the gadda di vida.

And hell these are popular songs, give me the worst one on any c.d. and it would be even worse.

( keeping in mind, i have nothing against these bands, but if we are going to complain about scientific inaccuracies, we could do it for any band just as easily. Especially if we disregard context of the song.)

 

[Robo Sapien]

LOL, I'm not speaking of scientific accuracy though, that would defeat the purpose of art. Those songs are the art of fun and decadence, ICP is just dumbtarded.

 

[Furcifer]

To me we could do the same thing with a lot of bands.

Kiss- If we all rock and rolled all night and partied every day nothing would get done. That is stupid.

The rolling stones - Why the hell would i want to paint a red door black, if its red its probably red for a reason. And why would i want the sea to go a deeper blue, that would probably indicate some form of imbalance.

Acdc- I don't care how big your balls are.

The ramones - People can't come back to life and neither can pets.
If your so sedated you need a wheelchair, you should probably go to rehab.

Beastie boys - Women are more than just "girls " do do you laundry, etc.

Black sabbath - Magnetic fields do not turn people to steel.

Iron butterfly - One cannot go to the garden of eden, let alone the gadda di vida.

And hell these are popular songs, give me the worst one on any c.d. and it would be even worse.

( keeping in mind, i have nothing against these bands, but if we are going to complain about scientific inaccuracies, we could do it for any band just as easily. Especially if we disregard context of the song.)

edit: eminem- you can't be a dentist and an oral hygenist. you could possibly get more ass than a toilet seat, depending on the toilet seat and it's location.

I think this pretty much settles it.

They be pickin on tha Juggalos. Bitches!

 

[sadhatter]

LOL, I'm not speaking of scientific accuracy though, that would defeat the purpose of art. Those songs are the art of fun and decadence, ICP is just dumbtarded.

So band that you don't like does it, retards.

Band you do like does it, just bein fun.

Gotcha.

 

[sadhatter]

edit: eminem- you can't be a dentist and an oral hygenist. you could possibly get more ass than a toilet seat, depending on the toilet seat and it's location.

I think this pretty much settles it.

They be pickin on tha Juggalos. Bitches!

It just boils down to the fact that people do not get horrorcore, and a lot of people don't like rap. Add that to the fact that the only icp songs that get played are literally the worst on the c.d. and you have a recipe for an easy target.

I mean look at the only icp stuff that gets any play, homies, lets go all the way, miracles. These are the songs that are popular/clean enough to get played.

If you judge any artist based on their worst material of course they suck.

( waits for obligatory " i have a friend who made me listen to icp's entire collection/at least 5 c.d's and i still hate it" post. As an icp fan, i do not know a single other fan who has gotten this opportunity, but i see the claim made constantly when the issue of not hearing good songs gets brought up. I would really like to meet " Johnny Juggalo" that is going around forcing people to listen to icp's discography.)

And sucking isn't even the issue, if you think they suck, cool. But to say that they do not have an intelligent message, or at the very least some decent themes ( skepticisim is an ongoing theme for one. Economic hardship, unity, the list goes on) , or like the majority, to simply dismiss them as some wierd al esque band. That is simply coming from a position of not understanding the work due to lack of exposure.

 

[Dr. Keith]

So band that you don't like does it, retards.

Band you do like does it, just bein fun.

Gotcha.

This.

 

[Dr. Keith]

The emergent topic is the societal impact of the song; how it perpetuates this circus of stupid.

No, the emergent topic is that reasonably smart people got a bit high up on their little saddles and mistakenly took ICP lyrics seriously.

Ooops!

 

[Furcifer]

It just boils down to the fact that people do not get horrorcore, and a lot of people don't like rap. Add that to the fact that the only icp songs that get played are literally the worst on the c.d. and you have a recipe for an easy target.

I mean look at the only icp stuff that gets any play, homies, lets go all the way, miracles. These are the songs that are popular/clean enough to get played.

If you judge any artist based on their worst material of course they suck.

( waits for obligatory " i have a friend who made me listen to icp's entire collection/at least 5 c.d's and i still hate it" post. As an icp fan, i do not know a single other fan who has gotten this opportunity, but i see the claim made constantly when the issue of not hearing good songs gets brought up. I would really like to meet " Johnny Juggalo" that is going around forcing people to listen to icp's discography.)

And sucking isn't even the issue, if you think they suck, cool. But to say that they do not have an intelligent message, or at the very least some decent themes ( skepticisim is an ongoing theme for one. Economic hardship, unity, the list goes on) , or like the majority, to simply dismiss them as some wierd al esque band. That is simply coming from a position of not understanding the work due to lack of exposure.

I'll tell you this, if you don't listen to much music, and you really want to pack a lot of good music into your music listening, then don't listen to ICP.

I listen to a lot of music, and I have the time to listen to a few albums once and a while and appreciate what these guys have to offer to music. Not the best, but these guys are more into music and playing than so many more artists that get played ALL the time.

Maybe it's a Detroit thing. These guys don't front anything. They've always been straight up and they talk to their fans. They've got more invested in music, of themselves than 10 Lady Gaga's. But whatever, some people want to watch some ******** skinny chick belt out some overproduced crap and strut her stuff on TMZ.

I don't get that, but I get what ICP is doing. If you don't get it so be it, they said it best- **** 'em all.

 

[Robo Sapien]

So band that you don't like does it, retards.

Band you do like does it, just bein fun.

Gotcha.

I was being facetious.

 

[Drudgewire]

If you don't get it so be it, they said it best- **** 'em all.

And Lyle Lovett whoever the that is.

 

[luchog]

Or how many people understand it?

By that logic Andy Kaufman was a hack.

Hardly. Most people "got" Kaufman, and recognized the absurdism; they just didn't care for his particular brand of humour. And I've not heard anyone argue that Kaufman was always successful in what he attempted. Some of his gags were brilliant, some failed spectacularly. Andy Kaufman was also a pioneer, he was doing things that no one had tried to do on the scale that he attempted. He pushed the envelope in many different ways. ICP merely cashed in on an existing trend, riding the tails of theatrical and shock artists like GWAR, Limp Bizkit, SOD, The Misfits, Green Jelly, and Cannibal Corpse.

I would say that people not getting it is the person not getting it's fault.

Sorry, that's a cop-out. While there will always be a percentage of people who faile to spot satire; at some point the artist has to take responsibility for how his work is received. To claim that it's someone else's responsibility to recognize your satirical intent, regardless of how poorly executed, is intellectually and artistically lazy at best, and flat-out dishonest at worst.

If maybe 10-20 percent of the audience fails to get it; then an argument can be made that they're simply idiots or confused. When that number approaches 50%, then you have to start accepting the fact that your satire is simply not as effective as you think. When it becomes the majority, as in the case of ICP, then to claim that they "just don't get it", then either you're being disingenuous in your refusal to acknowledge your failure, or your claims of satire are flat-out spurious. Especially when those who fail to get it are your primary target demographic.

Anyone can take a crap on someone's front lawn and call it satire. But unless you can show through the act itself, just how it is satirical, and just what it is you're satirizing, you either have to admit that the satire has failed and you're nothing more than a kitchen-sink dramatist; or your claim of satire is just a bogus excuse to **** on someone's grass.

Especially when said people have listened to maybe 1, 2 maybe a max of 10 songs. And then claim that there is nothing to get.

First: Demonstrate evidence that people are making that judgement from only a few songs. Some of us have been subjected to far more than that. Second, unless you're writing concept albums; the individual songs should be sufficiently self-contained to stand on their own as works of satire. Even if you are writing concept albums, that fact should be recognizable in the body of the album, and every piece should clearly contribute. ICP fails on both those counts. Truly good satirical music functions both on its own, as well as in the body of a larger context. Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage is a great example of this. In fact, Zappa's entire career exemplifies mastery of satire and social commentary. Even his detractors typically recognized the satirical nature of his work; even while deriding the degree profanity and obscenity he used. They disliked it, not because they failed to recognize the satire, but because they were the ones being satirized.

What you're claiming is that we have to simply assume that the work is satirical, or take at face value the claim by the artist that the work is satirical, and interpet everything through that filter. Again, if you have to do that, you've failed. The intent may be satire, but the end result is just a pile of crap in the front yard.

 

[luchog]

IYou use the biker bar example because you know exactly what to expect from your intended audience. That caveat can't be said about producing and selling music. To make the examples equivalent you'd have to produce a biker bar album and sell only to biker bars. Or a mental hospital album for sale only in mental hospitals.

Hard to prove any intention with an album, walking into a biker bar has intent written all over it.

True for isolated incidents; but when the reaction is consistent within their primary target demographic over an 18-year-long career -- combined with the fact that the band is actively involved with the very fanbase that you claim failed to get their satirical intent (the juggalo subculture) -- that excuse wears very thin, very fast; and begins to look a whole lot like post-hoc rationalization.

Incidentally, their first incarnation (Inner City Posse), carried none of the satire you claim for the band; but was just another sleazy gansta rap group. The "Carnival Spirit" was nothing more than a marketing gimmick at a time when cartoonish, over-the-top grotesque stage productions were reaching their peak of popularity.

 

[Questioninggeller]

Two more articles about this:

Kidding the Clowns Online, but Who Will Laugh Last? ‎
New York Times
By Dave Itzkoff
April 29, 2010

EVEN for guys who paint their faces with clown makeup and rap about brutality and dead bodies they found in the streets, the past few months have been strange for Insane Clown Posse. After proudly representing the horrorcore rap scene for nearly two decades, this hip-hop group, consisting of the Detroit natives Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, is enjoying a resurgence in attention — if not popularity — from Internet videos poking fun at their music and their harlequin-faced fans, who call themselves Juggalos.
...
This cycle of sincerity and satire has led the band’s critics to wonder if it really is in on the joke. But Insane Clown Posse says it’s having the last laugh, taking pride in these parodies and using them to reach a wider audience, even those viewers who find them unintentionally funny. Here, Insane Clown Posse and its parodists retrace the path of this unlikely media circus.
...
III. Miracles

The video for “Miracles,” a song from the Insane Clown Posse album “Bang! Pow! Boom!” (Psychopathic Records), in which the band celebrates the wonderment of everyday life in occasionally profane style, was released on April 6.

VIOLENT J When we’re talking to the Juggalos, it’s not always about chop-chop, kill-’em-up, you know? I guess some of it might come from having kids over the last five years, looking at everything from that perspective. I mean, a rainbow can be explained. But who doesn’t say, “Wow, look at the rainbow?”

SHAGGY 2 DOPE If Celine Dion would have come out with that song, people would have been, like, “Oh, that’s a beautiful song.” But because it’s coming out of our mouths, all of a sudden, we’re retards.

JOST The question for me was: Why now were they suddenly so impressed by these things? Why did, suddenly, last week, pyramids strike them as impressive? Or a butterfly? I also loved the anger that was directed at scientists. They were asking about all these things, and clearly someone who was trying to explain it to them, they got really furious with.
...

Full: New York Times

and:

Violent J of Insane Clown Posse Explains the Remarkable Song ‘Miracles’
4/27/10 at 4:45 PM
New York Magazine

...
Everyone's talking about "Miracles." What's the story behind the song and concept?

People that have listened to us for a while know that we've always included one, sometimes three, deep, meaningful songs on our records. So the style itself isn't anything new for ICP, it's just the first time we ever made a video for one. The concept is about appreciating everything in this world. It's not about God; it's not about religion; it's not 100 percent about science, even. These things are just beautiful things; they're like miracles.
...

Full: New York Magazine

 

[Drewbot]

It's so bad. I can't even believe how utterly and unintentionally bad it is.

 

[Questioninggeller]

Look's like the Insane Clown Posse (ICP) are back in the news because of this:

She Said, They Said: Ms. Tequila Vs. Juggalo
The New York Times
Compiled by Dave Itzkoff
August 18, 2010

Juggalo Gathering LLC, the company that produces the Gathering of the Juggalos concerts, said on Wednesday that neither it nor the band Insane Clown Posse was responsible for an incident in which Tila Tequila, right, the reality television star and singer, was attacked by fans after taking the stage at the festival on Saturday.
...
Tila Tequila, whose real name is Tila Nguyen, filed a complaint with law enforcement officials in Hardin County, Ill., where the festival was held. She has said that she required stitches after audience members pelted her with rocks, glass bottles, firecrackers and waste from portable toilets.

Full: The New York Times

and with the current news, The Guardian tells us more about "Miracles":

Insane Clown Posse: a magnet for ignorance‎
The Guardian
By Louis Pattison
August 18, 2010

Fascinated by miracles such as, er, magnets, Insane Clown Posse should be a laughing stock. But their fans – the Juggalos – symbolise a growing reactionary culture in America, in which ignorance is seen as a virtue

...
Earlier this year, however, the pair further elaborated on their worldview with the single Miracles, a quasi-mystical number about all the wonders of the natural universe that Insane Clown Posse don't – but more importantly, don't want to – understand. The widely circulated highlight finds Shaggy 2 Dope pondering "****in' magnets – how do they work?" before announcing his question was effectively rhetorical, because all scientists are "lying *****************" (Saturday Night Live took this anti-science angle up and ran with it, in style).

But Juggalo culture is no freak of nature. Indeed, one can see it as part of a reactionary groundswell of American culture that sees ignorance of science and book-learnin' not as a weakness, but as a virtue. It's the presidency of George W Bush (famously not really "a details guy"), Tea Party tub-thumpers convinced Obama is a Muslim socialist because Glenn Beck was just thinking it out loud, and creationists disproving evolution by pointing out no one ever found life in a jar of peanut butter.

This is a mindset that knows what it knows thanks to what the US comedian Stephen Colbert called "truthiness" etc etc – defined by Colbert as "a 'truth' that a person claims to know intuitively, from the gut, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination or facts". And it stubbornly refuses to be enlightened. In this TV interview, filmed shortly after the Miracles video went viral, the host presents Insane Clown Posse with a book called The Way Things Work, featuring a chapter on exactly how magnets work. They do not, it's fair to say, look particularly happy.

"It's a lot funner being the dumb guy, because then you get to appreciate the beautiful things like all the miracles we talk about," says Violent J.

"Science can be real exciting," concedes Shaggy 2 Dope. "But I'd rather get what we call p**sy. Know what I'm saying?" Well, quite.

Full: The Guardian

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

I just checked that song and the music video out. I had never heard of it before.

Wow. Um, wow.

I'm not sure if I think it's idiotic, silly and lame in a really special kind of way or whether I...kind of like it.

They aren't really claiming these phenomena are miracles. "Miracle" is just a figure of speech. They are just saying they are absolutely and staggeringly amazing.

Which they are. The gentlemen in clown makeup and track suits who are spouting most foul profanity at deafening volumes are, well, absolutely correct.

The wonder, mystery and beauty of the universe and the transient and transcendent nature of music is a universal and profound idea expressed simply and eloquently in the poetry of Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Wordsworth, Shelley, Mickiewicz...and the Insane Clown Posse.


"*********** magnets, how do they work?
And I don't wanna talk to a scientist
Y'all ***************** lying, and getting me pissed."

is a masterpiece of stupidity, though.

Just priceless. Priceless.


ETA: Not only are these things basic science, they are elementary school level science. Not even 4th or 5th grade. "*********** magnets" and "how do they work" is 2nd grade or 3rd grade science, if memory serves. Maybe even 1st.

"*********** rainbows after it rains", "Hot lava, snow, rain and fog", "Plant a little seed and nature grows" are also taught at that level, as are "a caterpillar turn into a butterfly" and "Solar eclipse, and vicious weather". The basics of the solar system are 1st or 2nd, if memory serves.

And why your children would look like you- that's something a 4- or 5-year-old might understand and fail to be amazed by.

"Water, fire, air and dirt" might be middle school Earth Science.

ETA 2: These guys are sorta being ironic, right? This stuff isn't serious. As with the class clown who plays dumb for laughs, it's a studied and deliberate kind of stupidity. Yeah, they are a bit tongue in cheek and in on the joke.

I think.

I hope.

ETA 3: "Fifteen thousand Juggalos together", however, might indeed be a miracle. Magic may be involved.

How these people have more than about five fans is a mystery and a miracle.

...or the first solid proof we have ever had that Satan might exist...either one...

 

[Jackalgirl]

I’d rather be the dumbed-down guy appreciating everything than the guy who knows everything and doesn’t appreciate [anything]. (Here)

I am saddened by the idea that understanding how something works somehow makes someone appreciate it less. : (