Insane Clown Posse are F’ing Evangelicals? No F’ing Way!
Insane Clown Posse are Christians, yo. And they say Fuck a lot.
Ezra Klein points to me to a recent Guardian profile, “Insane Clown Posse: And God created controversy – America’s nastiest rappers in shocking revelation – they’ve been evangelical Christians all along,” which he assured readers was “amazing.”
Despite their having been around a long time, my familiarity with ICP is a single tune, “F- The World,” introduced to me back in 2001 by a colleague on a monthlong trip to Egypt and my recollection of having been amused by the line “F- Kyle and his brother Tom Petty.” (You see, despite sharing a last name, they’re not actually related.)
Here’s the video, for the uninitiated. WARNING: The artists don’t censor the F-word. By their own count, they use it 93 times in the song.
As for the amazingness of the interview, it’s of a piece with the video: If you’re amused by creative use of the English language’s most flexible expletive — Is there anything it can’t do? — you’ll likely find it at least mildly worth reading. A representative snippet, uncensored:
But they also seem melancholy and preoccupied with the negative critical response to Miracles. Saturday Night Live just parodied it (“Fuckin’ blankets, how do they work?”) and the internet is filled with amused and sometimes outraged science bloggers dissecting the lyrics. Violent J and Shaggy have been watching them, they tell me, feeling increasingly saddened and irate.
“A college professor took two days out of her fucking life to specifically attack us,” says Violent J. “Oh yeah, she had it all figured out.”
One of the ICP road crew locates the video on his iPhone, and it is indeed withering: “The [Miracles] video is not only dumb, but enthusiastically dumb, endorsing a ferocious breed of ignorance that can only be described as militant. The entire song is practically a tribute to not knowing things.”
“Fuck you, man,” says Violent J. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Did you anticipate this kind of reaction?” I ask them.
“No,” sighs Violent J. “I figured most people would say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know Insane Clown Posse could be deep like that.’ But instead it’s, ‘ICP said a giraffe is a miracle. Ha ha ha! What a bunch of idiots.'” He pauses, then adds defiantly, “A giraffe is a fucking miracle. It has a dinosaur-like neck. It’s yellow. Yeah, technically an elephant is not a miracle. Technically. They’ve been here for hundreds of years…”
“Thousands,” murmurs Shaggy.
“Have you ever stood next to an elephant, my friend?” asks Violent J. “A fucking elephant is a miracle. If people can’t see a fucking miracle in a fucking elephant, then life must suck for them, because an elephant is a fucking miracle. So is a giraffe.”
How can you argue with logic so compelling?
The above-referenced SNL parody, incidentally, is pretty funny.
Ha! That Petty brothers line always cracked me up too. I always kind of figured ICP knew they weren’t related, but now I wonder….
I do love how that song skewers everyone, from the “Beastie Boys and the Dalai Lama” to the uber-specific, “You know the guy that operates the Rouge River draw bridge in Delray on Jefferson? F HIM!”
Jugalos. Sure