An Interrogation of Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope – HuffPost 7.29.11

Mike Ragogna: So, who the heck’s on the phone?

Violent J: This is Violent J! The Duke of the Wicked.

Shaggy 2 Dope: What’s stranglin’, it’s Shaggy 2 Dope. I believe the festival you’re talking about is the highlight of our life every year, which is known as the Gathering Of The Juggalos.

MR: Let’s get some details, when is this happening?

S2D: It’s happening August 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th. It’s four days and four nights long. However, on August 10th it actually begins. Many, many, many Juggalos like to show up the Wednesday before and tail gate it out in the parking lot and get the party started a day early.

VJ: Get the burgers cookin’.

S2D: Right, so we’ve opened the doors early the past couple of years, so it’s actually kind of a five day thing.

MR: The list of acts is incredible, for instance, Charlie Sheen? I know some of these guys are friends of yours, like Busta Rhymes, but how did you get this batch?

VJ: We sit around at a big round table with our company Psychopathic, which is made of people like us. Not all of us have finished high school.

S2D: Not all of us have finished middle school for that matter.

VJ: Not all of us come from backgrounds where we used to run festivals or work for other record labels. Psychopathic is made up of childhood friends that learned this whole business together as we came up, which is a cool thing for Shaggy and myself because we get to work together with our friends from school days. Everyday, we are still together in that same click like when we were seventeen.

MR: Let’s talk about that for a second. You were listed as hardcore hip-hop but there is also horrorcore involved here. Where did you guys get the idea to put those together?

VJ: Quite honestly, Detroit. When we came up in rap in about 1990-1991, this is what they were doing in Detroit.

S2D: Everybody had a gimmick to them, everybody had a story to them. It wasn’t just sitting on a stool on stage with a microphone and guitar, it was about performing.

VJ: It was about showmanship, this is what Detroit was doing. It wasn’t nationally popular, but cats from Detroit were coming on stage out of coffins. Then you had Kid Rock. In his videos, he was riding around on a tractor in a big cowboy hat. It was like pro wrestling, all the musical acts had a gimmick. That’s being real with you; all the acts in Detroit then had a theme, they were character driven. When we came up, we were the wicked clowns, that was our deal. Looking back on Detroit music that’s been around a long time, looking at Alice Cooper, even KISS, Detroit was one of the first major cities they were successful in. You’ve also got Iggy Pop…you’ve got a lot of craziness coming out of Detroit for a long time. I think Detroit is just a little bit deeper into the music, they need more entertainment, they need a show as well.

MR: Yeah, even as far back as Mitch Rider, and you guys were obviously fans of pro wrestling?

VJ: Huge fans of pro wrestling.

S2D: And we still are. Honestly, wrestling connects us to our childhood. It’s been there since we were little kids, we used to do it in our backyard. We used to take it serious too, we used to hand out fliers all through the neighborhood and have our moms cook hotdogs for everybody for free.

VJ: It was as professional as little kids could be, our organization N.A.W.–National Allstar Wrestling. All of our friends would wrestle, even if they couldn’t wrestle.

S2D: We were little entrepreneurs in our backyard promoting shows, now we do the same exact thing except we’re grown-ass men. We still do the same thing, we book wrestling shows, we advertise them. We run our own promotion, which is called Juggalo Championship Wrestling, we run internet pay per view out of Detroit or somewhere else in the country. Juggalos log on and they watch and it’s like our own TV show we produce. It has story lines, it has characters. We love wrestling.

VJ: It can hang with any promotion out there, but our goal is to not beat them or compete with them. We’re just there having fun.

MR: Cool, okay let’s get back to your Gathering Of The Juggalos.

VJ: Yeah, sure, like how you asked how we came up with those names. There is no method to the madness, other then our friends that we grew up with sitting around brainstorming. We assume that our fans are just like us, so anybody that Shaggy and myself, and the guys we work with at the record company would want to see, we just assume the Juggalos would want to see as well. We sit there and we say, “You know who would be awesome? Busta Rhymes.” “Oh hell yeah, Busta Rhymes would be the bomb!” So, then we go for Busta Rhymes. It’s not a marketing tool, there’s not any strategy to it, it’s all about creating the best, coolest, funnest thing we could possibly do. I believe other festivals put together their shows by looking at who’s touring at that time, they look at who’s already on the road. It’s much cheaper to bring somebody into a festival, when that band is already out touring.

S2D: It’s a part of that tour budget, so you don’t have to specifically fly them into that city. They are already going to be coming through that city.

VJ: We pull our guys out of all kinds of places. We pull some artists out of obscurity and we talk them into coming back and playing at the Gathering. It’s all about that good time, that dream show, that dream atmosphere. I can’t believe all of these guys are going to be in one place all weekend. We create it each and every year to be a Juggalo paradise, a Juggalo Shangri-La. Yeah, we miss sometimes, we don’t always nail it. Some groups we pick that the Juggalos don’t want to see. So, besides that, we do pretty good.

MR: Why, it’s a Juggalo Woodstock. And it’s scheduled like a marathon.

S2D: It just don’t stop.

VJ: But a lot of people sleep from about 7 in the morning to about 2 in the afternoon. Those are sleeping times for the most part.

MR: You have concerts going on as well as wrestling, and you have sideshows. What are the sideshows about?

VJ: Oh man. Some of them we can’t talk about, some of it is exactly what it sounds like, a sideshow. Somebody pounding nails through their lips, or somebody eating fire, or somebody walking around on stilts and juggling chainsaws, or somebody hanging from their nipples out of a tree, I don’t know.

S2D: They have groups of Juggalos that set up there own sites and have their things going on. It’s festivals within festivals within festivals. It’s pure organized confusion at it’s best.

MR: As far as wrestling, you guys are going to get back in the ring, right?

VJ: We always get in there and hurt some people, absolutely. (laughs)

MR: You guys are pulling acts out of retirement, like Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. They’re the two that come to mind that have been “retired,” but you also have one of my favorite artists ever on the bill, George Clinton.

VJ: Vanilla Ice plays the Gathering every year and he kills it, they love Vanilla Ice. People like MC Hammer and George Clinton still tour they are just below the radar nowadays. Yeah, ICP isn’t the most favorite band on the planet, we’re the most hated band on the planet. It’s not easy being a Juggalo, if you walk around with an ICP tattoo or an ICP shirt on, people mess with you for that alone. “What are you doing listening to those idiots? Blah, blah, blah.”

MR: Uh-oh. Am I in trouble for doing this interview with you?

VJ: Amongst your friends and peers possibly. (laughs) So what seems to go over at the Gathering is other groups that don’t maybe have the best reputation. Like, in other words, if somebody is picked on by the mainstream, if the mainstream is pointing their finger at somebody and saying things about them, they come to the Gathering and they do great.

MR: You’ve got another infamous person on this list, Bobby Brown.

VJ: That’s a perfect example. If Bobby Brown goes over good, then we can have more R&B at the Gathering, we love R&B. It kind of works. If you’re on top of the charts right now, it probably wouldn’t work, but if you had your time and now people are looking at you funny, you come to the Gathering and they love you. And people blame Bobby Brown for Whitney Houston’s downfall and all this other s**t, and the deal is the more the mainstream points the finger at Bobby Brown, the more Bobby Brown can come to the Gathering and be accepted, because we feel his pain. Juggalos feel his pain and there is no finger-pointing going on here. We accept anybody who gets shunned by the rest of the world and come right in.

MR: Even Chris Brown?

VJ: I don’t know. He’s too popular. He’s back on top again.

S2D: Well, Juggalos also don’t like woman beaters. They don’t like that.

MR: Now, one of my favorites on your list is Jimmy “JJ” Walker.

VJ: Yeah, JJ, hell yeah. Weird pairing right? You wouldn’t think JJ and the Juggalos would be something, but JJ has come out for us a couple of times. He hosted something we did in Philadelphia called The Oddball Bonanza, he was our comedian on that show. Juggalos love him and he loves Juggalos, it’s so hard to figure them out. The weirdest pairings and the weirdest connections happen in the world of Juggalos. That’s why I find it interesting every day of my life because it’s definitely not up to me and Shaggy, because sometimes, me and Shaggy put something up there and it isn’t good.

MR: Which brings us to Charlie Sheen. How’d you get him signed up?

VJ: Well we did The Howard Stern Show, and somebody mentioned that it would be awesome if we got Charlie Sheen to do the Gathering. We started saying, “Oh man, that would be great, that would be awesome.” Then, when we got back to Detroit, somebody had called us from his camp and said, “Hey man you should call this guy, he manages Charlie Sheen and try to work it out. It might actually be cool,” and we’re thinking we could never afford Charlie Sheen type of money, but we called and started talking to his manager. It turns out he’s not doing it for the money, he’s doing it because he wants to do it. He’s doing it because Charlie Sheen recognizes that this is something unusual, that this is something different. I know when things are different people sway away from it, but we believe that the Juggalos and the Gathering will go down in history. I don’t think there has been anything like Juggalos in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, I don’t think there will be anything like Juggalos again. You can’t compare Juggalos to Deadheads, you can’t compare Juggalos to anybody because Juggalos are bigger than a fan base, they are a movement. They’re a way of life, they’re more personal, they’re more serious, and they’re way more devoted to what they are. Charlie Sheen? You’ve got a guy that’s seen it all and done it all, but yet when he looks at the Juggalo Gathering, he sees something he’s never done. He sees something that is truly different, and to the best of our knowledge that’s why he wanted to come do it.

MR: You just booked him because you wanted his goddesses out there.

S2D: There’s nothing wrong with that, come on. (laughs)

VJ: That’s what we said on Howard Stern, that’s how we got on the subject of Charlie Sheen. We were talking about his goddesses.

MR: You’re going to have so many acts. You’re going to have Busta Rhymes, Flavor Flav, Vanilla Ice, Xzibit, MC Hammer, CKY, Kottonmouth Kings. Love them, by the way.

VJ: Kottonmouth Kings are huge! They are Juggalo icons.

S2D: We’ve been down with them for many moons.

VJ: We’ve toured with them probably five or six times. They are very large in the Juggalo community. People love the Kottonmouth Kings.

MR: You also have DJ Quik, Charlie Sheen of course, Ice Cube, Bobby Brown… who am I missing?

VJ: Ya know, we’ve got Lil Jon. The main thing about the Juggalo gathering is if you’re into what we do, which is underground horrocore, we have taking place in the woods after midnight–after the main stage shuts down–the best of who’s who in horrocore. They come from all over the country, all over the world even. We have the best, scariest, coolest, freakiest, funkiest acts you’ll ever see. There is something surreal about walking around those woods at night, seeing those artists up on stage.

S2D: It’s a great setting for a great set of people.

VJ: It’s just unbelievable, there is nothing like it ever. There’s like four stages out in the woods. We also have comedians like Brian Posehn, we have Harland Williams. Over at wrestling, we have the biggest legends of wrestling show that we’ve ever heard of ever going down anywhere. If you’re into nostalgic wrestling, we have some of the greatest matches that ever happened in history, they are happening again, some of the biggest rematches in history too. Also, some of the biggest and best dream matches, matches people have always wanted to see their whole lives. They are actually going to see them happen on wrestling stages. I’m telling you, for wrestling fans, there is no place they would rather be than the Gathering.

MR: It sounds like you also will be having new artists at this even too, right?

VJ: Yeah, like I was telling you, we have the best acts of tomorrow. We have acts that are bubbling under and on the verge of becoming huge stars. Acts like Tech N9NE.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

VJ: 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…

S2D: …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.

MR: I actually worked at Universal for a while and assembled an Insane Clown Posse collection that I guess was never released. It was a lot of fun listening to your albums, but I felt we should’ve gotten you guys to do it yourselves.

VJ: Exactly, I can imagine to not be familiar with our music and then start going through our music to find the best songs, it had to be quite an adventure.

MR: It was fun, and around the same time, there was a Rob Zombie collection.

VJ: He’s playing here in Detroit tonight. It would be a dream come true for him to play the Gathering.

MR: Did you reach out?

VJ: Oh, yeah, but some of these prices, man, we can’t meet.

S2D: We have to set our losses somewhere.

VJ: We’re not really making money on the Gathering. We’re losing, but it’s worth having the event.

MR: Let’s go through where it is and when it is one more time.

VJ: It’s in Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, which is, believe it or not, in the middle of nowhere.

S2D: I don’t even believe it exists on a map. It’s somewhere in the state of Illinois and there is no phone reception, it’s literally in the middle of nowhere.

VJ: If your cellphone gets reception, you’re a very lucky individual. You’re going down dirt roads, you think you’re being set up and trapped or something, then there they are–15,000 tents and a mist above the fans. It’s just a site you’ve never seen. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

S2D: Beyond magic.

VJ: You can check it out at www.juggalogathering.com. And you can see it on YouTube.com, of course, you can check out the Juggalo Gathering 2011 infomercial. You will see two infomercials hosted about Vanilla Ice and a few other people. It’s great and it’s funny and it gives you a rundown of everything that is happening at the Gathering. It’s the 12th annual Gathering.

S2D: The actual festival goes from the 11th to the 14th.

MR: But people should get there on the 10th to get to the tailgating, right?

VJ: Oh, man, yeah. Put it this way…if you go to the Gathering, it’s an event, it’s an experience you will remember for the rest of your life. That’s what life’s about, racking up cool experiences and cool memories.

S2D: A lot of people, that weekend, will go to a water park, and a week from that weekend, they will forget all about it. But anybody that goes to that Gathering that weekend will remember it for the rest of their lives.

VJ: That’s the real deal. The last thing I want to say about it, it’s not so much about who is playing on the main stage as much as it’s about the feeling between the Juggalos. Those people together all go through the same stuff in life, they all feel like the underdog or not wanted or something. When you get together with thousands of people that are just like you, it just creates a euphoria, man. It’s just wonderful, there has never been one fight at the Gathering. People think that if they go to the Gathering and they aren’t a Juggalo, then they are going to get beat up. It’s exactly the opposite. You get welcomed with open arms. I can’t say enough about it, I’m so excited about it.

MR: I really appreciate you guys doing the interview. Maybe we’re going to need another one to talk about how it went.

VJ: Hell yeah, brother, anytime.

Transcribed by Theo Shier