Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J & Shaggy 2 Dope – HuffPost 7.29.11

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Violent J: My advice is YouTube. It’s hard for us to say because the way we came up was the exact opposite way to do it nowadays. With the computer and YouTube and all of that, now you have to be a Justin Beiber and be a YouTube sensation. The good thing about YouTube is that it’s the TV of today, and the best thing is there is no program director, there’s nobody telling you no. You don’t have to go there and solicit your stuff and have somebody say yay or nay to playing it on YouTube. YouTube is straight from the people to the world, so if you can come up with a three-minute video that’s interesting or clever or exciting enough and stick it on YouTube, you can become a star, just like the homeless radio guy voice, or Justin Beiber, or like every other thing that exploded on YouTube. You can become a star overnight on YouTube. Of course, that’s how we make our noise, we make videos and post them on YouTube, that’s our direct link to the world. It’s making corporate giants like MTV and VH1 more obsolete, it’s become a direct route from you the musician to the people of the world. Put it on YouTube. If it’s good, people will start to notice it, it’s a wonderful thing. Nothing sucks worse than having another human being in charge of your destiny. If you work hard and make a whole album, and then you take your first single up to MTV and some guy in a suit…

Shaggy 2 Dope: …he don’t like it. It’s done, that’s your career.

VJ: If he didn’t like it, that’s it. Thankfully, because of places like YouTube, you now have a shot, with no middleman about it. You have a shot and I think that’s great.

MR: To heck with program directing.

VJ: To a certain degree, yeah.