Critics, hipsters and suits alike dismiss ICP as some lame-ass joke band who pulled a cheap stunt to get themselves thrown off of Disney's Hollywood Records. But ICP have been around for years. The Great Milenko (slated for the Hollywood imprint but recently released with additional tracks on Island), is their fourth album to date - and they've got a rabid following throughout the Midwest. During ICP's most recent East Coast jaunt, virtually all shows sold out, the t-shirts sold like mad, and they burned through truckloads of a nasty Motown soda pop called Faygo, used as a sort of baptismal water to soak and annoint the audience into the twisted domain of ICP. These guys ain't no one-hit wonders, they're for real, bro. Their shows can be best described as a communal gathering of knuckleheadz ready to go off.

ICP, the duo of VIOLENT J and SHAGGY 2 DOPE, are the ultimate modern Detroit band. Just like anti-Hippie heroes The Stooges and The MC5 around 1970, to the brutal Hardcore of Necros and Negative Approach circa 1980, to the House Music scene of Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson that rocked through 1990, ICP are the unbridled, dirty sound of the streets of the dirty Motor City. They're hard-ass White kids from integrated lower-class 'hoods, tough enough to hold their own, both as true gangbangers and as a legit Hip Hop crew.

The best way to describe the ICP's style of Rap Music is that they wear their influences on their sleeves: turn-of-the-decade Hip Hop hooligan shit like early Ice Cube, Cypress Hill and House Of Pain. The beats are slow and hard while the rhythmic lyrics are completely graphic and filthy. ICP ain't seasoned musicians; they clumsily rap over tape tracks supplied by their producer Mike E. Clark - but so what? At least they're honest about not being musicians.

Shaggy and J recently made their pro wrestling debut. Their steel cage match against The Chicken Boys at St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit had to be experienced to be believed. That's show biz!

You down with ICP? - yeah you know me!

SECONDS: So what do you muthafuckaz do?

VIOLENT J: It's wicked juggalo Rap. This is what we do; it's our fourth album. They come into our world and talk about how much it sucks. We didn't send USA Today a demo and say, "Review it." They went and bought one. They came into our world to review our shit. That's like asking me to review some Opera. Who's the best Opera singer? Paparazzi [sic]? I'll tell you he sucks because I don't know shit about Opera. I don't know good Opera from bad Opera. These guys don't know good street music from bad street music. Fuck them. We make music for juggalos on the streets. That's who would use my records. When you're writing a song, you're envisioning the juggalos on the streets buying your record. I'm not thinking about the guy at USA Today - I don't give a fuck about that guy. That's not my inspiration to make music. We make music for people on the streets. That's who I want to review my shit. Besides, ain't nobody reading USA Today. You got businessmen all over the country reading it - you ain't got a sixteen-year-old gangbanger reading that shit. You don't got some kid having trouble with his parents reading that shit.

SECONDS: Are people trying to knock you down?

VIOLENT J: Constantly. There's a term in the Rap world used all the time: "Playa hating." When somebody is doing something fresh, everybody else slams them. Everybody playa hates us. In my own hometown of Detroit, we sell more records than Snoop Doggy Dogg and Pearl Jam and yet we don't have one radio station playing us. We make radio edits but not one station plays us. The local weekly magazines don't talk about us at all. We're the biggest thing there, you know what I'm saying? As far as local bands, we sell the most records and our own city doesn't cover us. You know why? Because the writers for those magazines and the people at the radio stations all "know somebody who knows you" and blah blah blah ... our city doesn't support the local bands. That's why I'm like "Fuck Detroit." That means the industry, not the people.

SECONDS: What are kids saying to you?

VIOLENT J: The kids are saying the same thing they always said. Everybody in Detroit's been down with us for years. Only now it's starting to spread out. New kids are jumping on the wagons of the Dark Carnival. It don't matter if you've been down for nine years or nine days; if you're a juggalo, you're a juggalo. We've got kids from L.A. to New York coming aboard the wagons of the Dark Carnival.

When they write about us in the newspaper, we're the bad guys. I proudly claim that spot. I'm the motherfucking bad guy. I love that spot. The juggalos on the streets and the people in the clubs know what we are. Of course, they see me with an ax talking about killing people on a record - but they know who I'm killing. We're like vigilantes in our music. I'm not going to sit here and talk about how good our music is. Fuck, I'm a bad guy. Only the people that buy the record and listen to it with a heart know we're not bad guys. They know we're vigilante-type bad guys. Everybody we kill on the record deserves to die. For example, I'll say, "He likes to fuck his sister and drink his moonshine / a typical redneck filthy fucking swine." That talks about incest, right? But what do I say? "A typical redneck filthy fucking swine" because he likes to fuck his sister. I'm calling him filthy; I'm dissing the guy, right? But when the newspapers review it, they say, "Songs about incest" like I'm for incest and writing songs about it.

SECONDS: For the uninitiated, tell us what a juggalo is.

VIOLENT J: In the Rap world, a lot of rappers wear expensive clothes and talk about how fresh they are. Everybody tries to be the shit. A juggalo is just the opposite. Everybody out there, they're nerds. The trick is to try and be the shit so you're not a nerd. When you wake up in the morning, women paint their face, men comb their hair. Everybody tries to be the shit. But when you wake up in the morning, that's you. When you put clothes on your body and paint your face up, you're trying to be the shit, but everybody's a nerd. That's a juggalo. Our bus driver right now was telling us about driving for Jewel. He said Jewel stops one hundred fifty miles before she gets to the city and puts her makeup on. She don't look as good as she claims. She's painting her fucking face up. A juggalo lets that true self shine, like "Yo, I'm a dork." People ask, "Why do you throw Faygo orange soda on the audience?" Because it don't make no sense, that's why we do it. People say, "Why don't you guys have live instruments on stage?" Because I don't know how to play a fucking guitar! I fucking dropped out of school, I'm not gonna hide nothing. This is who we are. Everybody really isn't as fresh as they make themselves out to be. You go for an interview at a job, you've got to create a character that this guy's gonna buy. You've got to get your suit, you've got to think of the right shit to say. They should interview a motherfucker from the heart. "You say you wanna be the vice president of our company." "Yeah." "Do you cheat on your wife?" "No, I'm faithful to my wife." "That's bullshit. Do you smoke Pot?" Fuck all this business shit, you know? When we hire people, I don't give a fuck if they finished school or not. I'll be asking them real shit.

SECONDS: One thing I see about your music is that it not only comes out of Hip Hop but also Detroit Rock.

VIOLENT J: Detroit Rock is famous for shit like this. Alice Cooper, Kiss, shit like that. But I gotta be honest with you - this is a shoot interview, us cutting straight to the fucking chase - I never listened to that shit.

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: What Kiss is doing is fresh, you know what I'm saying? Their look, blowing fire and bleeding all over - but you listen to the music and it don't match.

VIOLENT J: They don't sing about being a demon and an alien, they just look like that. Alice Cooper, he's wack now. He was anti-Christian back in the day and now he's a Christian. I'll never go back on what I am. I read a couple of newspaper articles where he said he never would have done the intro to our album if he knew what we were about. That's fake because I sat in a studio with him in Arizona for an hour explaining to him exactly what we're about. Then he said he was paid the money to do it but we didn't pay him shit. He did it just being cool. He ran, and Alice Cooper don't run from nothing. Detroit has always done this type of shit but they weren't musical influences. We listen to some dumb shit. We listen to Michael Jackson and Pearl Jam - my favorites. We listen to everything from the Spice Girls to N.W.A. and everything in between. The only thing I don't listen to is Country but if I heard a really good Country song I'd listen to it.

SECONDS: When people dis you guys and say you aren't real Hip Hop, how do you respond?

VIOLENT J: What is real Hip Hop?

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: What, you've got to be from New York to be real Hip Hop? People in New York say, "Tupac? That's not real Hip Hop." People in L.A.: "Wu-Tang? That's not real Hip Hop." What is real?

VIOLENT J: You show me a Hip Hop record where it's all real. Nobody got's that money they're talking about ...

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: The only real people are the ones that just do it in their rooms and don't even go to a studio. Everybody's in it to make money.

VIOLENT J: Everybody that don't like the music Insane Clown Posse creates can get the fuck out of our world. This is what we do. We make music for the juggalos. I don't like Marilyn Manson's music but I don't dis him because I don't like it. People compare us to him all the time. That's his world. Dwight Yoakam's probably got fans all over the place. I don't like Dwight Yoakam but he's got a place here.

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: You won't see a bunch of people protesting Dwight Yoakam, you know what I'm saying?

VIOLENT J: Okay, Hip Hop people say we're not real Hip Hop and we suck -

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: So don't listen to our record, you know what I'm saying?

VIOLENT J: I may not like Nas's music but I don't say he ain't real because I don't like his shit. Nas has an audience, Nas makes people happy with his music, Nas has a place in the business. We make people happy with our music, we've got a place. It may be a small place in the corner of the store but that's our place. We belong here, too. If somebody comes up in my face and says, "You guys ain't real Hip Hop" I'm going to shatter their fucking jaw. Coming up to me with that dumb shit is the most disrespectful thing in the world. The bigger our name gets, the more we get slammed. All these people are coming to us saying, "You guys don't belong here, you guys suck." You don't see us on any tours, do ya? You don't see us with Marilyn Manson. You don't see us on the Rage Against The Machine/Wu-Tang tour. We do our own tour because we know we'll destroy a stage with Faygo. We don't want to play with somebody else because too many people would be subjected to us and not like us. That's why when we come to town it's "Insane Clown Posse in concert" and that's it. We don't get on anyone else's tour. I know what we do is extreme, ruthless and offensive. We have our own stage.

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: We're not going to push ourselves on people that don't want to hear us.

VIOLENT J: We quit doing interviews with newspapers because that's not a music magazine. We're in the music world. We do music-related things.

SECONDS: Musically, I hear you coming out Cypress Hill, Ice Cube and House Of Pain.

VIOLENT J: You've got a really good ear brother, because those are our influences. That old Cypress sound, N.W.A., Geto Boys, even though that's out of style, we still sound like that. I'm all about old gangsta Hip Hop beats.

SECONDS: Do you live the words you sing?

VIOLENT J: Everything on our record is one-hundred-percent real. It just might be amplified a little louder to get the point across but this thing is real. I hate rednecks, I hate bigots. Our record is one-hundred-percent legit. All that stuff about three little pigs taking out a judge are real fantasies. That shit would be fun to do. We're like a horror movie. When you walk into a record store, it's like walking into a carnival. If you want to go on something slow and romantic, go buy a Luther Vandross album. If you want something fast crazy, you get a Sick Of It All record or something of that nature. If you want something funny, get Coolio. If you want something scary, come talk to us. If you don't, don't buy the record. All I know is there's no stopping Insane Clown Posse. We're going to be multi-Platinum because I know that there's enough people out there who are going to jump on the Dark Carnival wagon and be down with what we're saying. Everything we're saying is what kids are saying on the streets anyway. In high school, kids talk about crazy shit. I learned about sex way before they tried teaching me in school. I was having sex before I learned sex education. That's the real world.

In 1997, people are so fucking dumb. Me and my whole crew had HIV testing done a year and a half ago. We're sitting there in the lobby of the doctor's office watching a video. In the video, they've got this fucking dorky looking kid going, "C'mon Jane, everybody's doing it. Let's just make love." She's like, "I don't know, Bob. Do you have protection?" "No we don't need that, that's not cool." Nobody in America talks like that and this is what they're showing kids to have safe sex. The first thing you want to do after looking at that video is go out and have unprotected sex because you don't want to be like these dorks on TV. They should let the wicked clowns produce that tape. We'll speak to them in a language they understand. I'll be like, "Let me hit some skins. Fuck condoms, I'll swear I'll pull out and nut on your stomach." There's a message in our music but it's been spoken in a language people want to hear. But we're not all about a message. We're about fun, offensive lyrics. Only ten percent is the message. Any girl who listens to our music and is offended by the word "bitch" must be a bitch.

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: If we made an anti-homosexual song, who'd get offended by it? Not me. Homosexuals would get offended by it.

VIOLENT J: If my friends call me a "Homo," I laugh because I'm not Gay. That's why it's funny. If I say, "I was fucking this bitch" and women get pissed about it, they must be bitches. We have nothing against women; that's more than half the world. We refer to guys as bitches more than we do women on our records. We call each other bitches all the time. What I'm saying is so many millions of people could listen to our records and get the wrong thing out of it. All I care about is the people that do get the message. That's why we're going to be quadruple Platinum. Insane Clown Posse is the greatest band in the world and we don't even know how to play an instrument.

SECONDS: What kind of girls are into ICP?

VIOLENT J: A lot of real young Alternative girls. Back in the day, it used to be Hip Hop girls but now it's Alternative girls. They're into ICP but they're not into us. [laughs] A lot of people say, "You're in a band, you must get a lot of chicks." We don't get no chicks, never! Whenever one of us gets with a girl, he's like the star on the bus for two weeks.

SECONDS: Detroit's a lot different than other cities. You've got to be a little tougher, as a White kid ...

VIOLENT J: The section of Detroit we're from is the southwestern side of Detroit. Being White or Black didn't matter. It's the most integrated place in the whole city. Every race lives there.

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: Which is weird because Detroit it so segregated.

VIOLENT J: Believe me, in southwest Detroit, every race lives there. You have a gang there called the Latin Counts made up of Black kids, White kids, Latin kids. I can't remember one time where me being White had something to do with getting my ass kicked. Detroit is like the aftermath of a nuclear war but we love it. Detroit is a wasteland. At nine o' clock in the morning, rush hour, it's jam packed going into the city. At five o'clock, it's jam-packed coming out of the city. Everybody in the suburbs races downtown, makes all the money and races out to the suburbs and spends it.

SECONDS: Let's talk about wrestling. Who are your favorites?

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: Whoooh! Ric Flair, brother. And The Eliminators from Extreme Championship Wrestling.

VIOLENT J: The tag team called The Eliminators, Cronos and Saturn. They're the greatest wrestlers I've ever seen in my life.

SECONDS: Are there any wrestlers you've gotten stage moves from?

VIOLENT J: Wrestling is like music. Korn - the guy wears Adidas suits and cries all the time in his music. That's his gimmick. If I came on stage with the hair, Adidas shoes and crying on stage, you'd know who I was trying to be. If somebody came out wearing clown makeup, who would they be trying to be? Marilyn Manson wears panties and fishnet g-strings, that's his gimmick. Everybody's got a gimmick in wrestling, just like music. Wrestling and music are the same thing.

SECONDS: Do you remember Abdullah The Butcher?

VIOLENT J: Yeah, he still wrestles in Puerto Rico. He was going to kick my ass one day. His real name is Larry and I was backstage at a wrestling show and I was like, "Hey Larry. Hey Larry. Hey Larry." He said, "Get the fuck out of here before I kick your fucking ass." Now I know why he was pissed. If somebody was calling me by real name ... he's here making a living as "Abdullah The Butcher" and here's some dickhead in the parking lot calling him "Larry." Yeah, he's still wrestling. The Iron Sheik just quit wrestling ...

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: And now his nephew Sabu wrestles with ECW.

VIOLENT J: We made an appearance at a pay-per-view event in Ft. Lauderdale for Extreme Championshop Wrestling. Sabu came into the ring and kicked my ass.

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: Dropkicked me in the face with a folding chair.

VIOLENT J: Fucked us up. As soon as I get off tour, I have to get surgery on my ear to get it fixed.

SECONDS: When was the last time you had to fuck somebody up?

VIOLENT J: Last night. This kid wouldn't get the fuck off the stage. I love kids up on stage getting live but we have buckets full of water on stage and this kid dumped both of our buckets out, dumped all our Faygo balloons out and then he started taking our Faygo. When you touch the Faygo, that's it. I had to give him a Bruce Lee supersonic side kick and knock him off the fucking stage. He came back with a screwdriver trying to stab us and we had to beat his ass a little something.

SECONDS: Is your clown imagery coming out of John Wayne Gacy?

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: No. Fuck that fucking weirdo child-molesting weirdo fuck.

VIOLENT J: I wish he was alive so I could kill him. His shit is all wrong. You don't go killing little kids.

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: He was going around killing little kids because he's a fucking pervert.

VIOLENT J: Psychopaths are never the shit. Movies make psychopaths out to be fresh but psychopaths are never fresh. Michael Jackson is a real lunatic and that ain't fresh. His skin glows in the dark, his nose points at his forehead. That ain't fresh. A movie lunatic is Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. But a real lunatic? Take a look at Michael Jackson. A glow-in-the-dark child-molesting freaky motherfucker. Marilyn Manson paints his face like a weirdo, wears g-string thongs but backstage he's not running around chopping people up. The wicked clowns, on the other hand - everything you see is real. You can follow us around for two days and see some twisted shit going on but I don't claim to be a lunatic. I'm obviously a sane person, just a little stupid.

SECONDS: I always saw a difference between Horror and gore. For example, you don't see much blood in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but it scares the fuck out of you.

VIOLENT J: Real terror isn't running around saying how crazy you are. It's being a lunatic and letting other people decide you're a lunatic. You can't say on a record "I'm so fucking crazy that I'll rip your head off." You've just got to say "I'll rip your head off" and let other people come to the conclusion that you're crazy.

SECONDS: Tell us about your gang.

VIOLENT J: Our gang was weak. We got our asses kicked every night. We didn't sell drugs, we didn't sell guns, we just tried to be a gang as a family. But look who won. Who do you think rides in that tour bus with us? Our whole staff are my boys from back in the day.

SECONDS: Most people think The Great Milenko is your first record. What are your earlier recordings?

VIOLENT J: That's cool because we make every album like it is our first record. I never make a "part two."

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: The thing is, if people buy it and like it, they've got something else to go back and get.

VIOLENT J: Every single album has it's own life.

SECONDS: Who is "The Great Milenko"?

VIOLENT J: The Great Milenko is nothing but a reflection of yourself. If you read the credits inside the albums, we explain what everybody is. Our last album, Riddlebox, was totally different but once again, another reflection of yourself. Now, the riddlebox is a riddle. When you die, the first thing you face is a box on a table with a crank on the side. This is what I believe, honest to God. You turn the crank and what pops up is the riddle. Look into yourself. Do you have skeletons in your closet? Did your murder somebody? You're going to know if you're going to Heaven or Hell when you turn that crank. The only one who knows the answer to that riddle is you. The riddlebox makes you ask yourself, "If I die right now, where I am going?" I'd turn that crank scared of shit because I know where I'm going. That's what the riddlebox was, a reflection of yourself. Before that was The Ringmaster. The Ringmaster is all your evil doings taking form when you die. Jeffrey Dahmer's ringmaster would be the size of a giant. So, how big is your ringmaster? Before that was The Carnival Of Carnage, our first album. That's the coming of it all, the introduction of what we are. If you listen to the intros of the albums, it always tells you what they are. Up next is The Jeckyl Brothers, Jake and Jack Jeckyl. We'll tell you what this is when that record comes out.

SECONDS: What do your moms think about what you do?

VIOLENT J: My mom is all about it. When I put aluminum siding on my mom's house, she was all about it. My mom understands the Dark Carnival. As wicked as the shit comes out, I feel so good about it. I love our music.

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: Everyone we're close to understands it.

SECONDS: What would you like people to get about Insane Clown Posse?

VIOLENT J: Everything on our record is a reflection of you. There's going to be six albums until the end. I'm not saying that's the end of the world; it might be the end of the band. It might be the end of the listener. It might be the end of mankind. Six albums to the end. The Great Milenko is the fourth joker's card. There's going to be six. Every album is black with a clown face on it, like a joker's card. People that are offended by our music? Fuck you. Fuck all y'all. I don't say, "It's just not for you," I say "Fuck you." The new album is going to be more ruthless, more explicit and more offensive. We ain't going nowhere until all six albums drop and after that I don't think they'll be anybody left to bitch about us.

SECONDS: I've heard people say your problem with Hollywood Records was a publicity stunt ...

VIOLENT J: Fuck Disney. They tried to silence us and remove us from the shelves but all that did was amplify us. You can't silence us. This is the Insane Clown Posse powered by the Dark Carnival.

SHAGGY 2 DOPE: Disney might be large but the Dark Carnival's larger.