Insane Clown Posse – The Great Milenko
1996 was a tough year, particularly for two redneck men who are known for dressing up as clowns and spouting juvenile obscenities into a microphone. Violent J (Joseph Bruce) and Shaggy 2 Dope (Joseph Utsler), sometimes professional wrestlers and full time jackoffs were set to release their new album,
The Great Milenko. Recorded at Hollywood Records (a subsidiary of the otherwise child friendly corporation known as Disney) upon completion there was strong objection to offensive content by the label executives, who censored the album by removing three songs and other questionable content due to a desire to maintain their squeaky clean image and ease pressure from religious groups who wanted to crucify the project. The album ended up getting pulled from shelves regardless, and after much uproar over censorship they finally moved to Island records who released an uncut version of
The Great Milenko. Fueled by this controversy, all the promotion the album could ever want amongst the disenchanted youth of the world was met and eventually it was certified platinum in sales. The great American success story known as Insane Clown Posse had finally hit the big time, but through all the hype and hatred is the music actually any good?
Most critics will say no, this is an act you just don't go.
The Great Milenko is certainly rife with the kind of dim witted juvenile lyrics you would expect from an act designed purely to offend, obnoxious to the point they don't just step over the line where you can safely go with jokes about sex and violence but to that where they ejaculate over it. What is most curious about this angle is that
The Great Milenko is but one in a series of six musical oddities known as The Jokers Cards, a divine mystical experiment which hit its climax with
The Wraith: Shangri-La and
The Wraith: Hell's Pit in 2004. Ultimately the mythology of the group was that it was their plan to show you heaven and to show you hell through the Jokers cards revealing in the final song on
Shangri-La that Violent J and Shaggy follow God and ultimately want to make it into Heaven along with their Juggalo brothers and sisters. Whether this sounds like pretentious nonsense or not, giving the concept of these albums a very thin veneer of mysticism is fascinating considering the kind of lyrical approach used on
The Great Milenko which for most could surely negate any credit one could give to it. Its a world of sociopathic amorality played to the card of black humour, whether ironic or not its extremely childish and grating on the nerves to listen to two grown men sing lyrics of this quality for an odd hour or so -
Shazam BAM, shocka locka lokey
Shaggy the clown back like scoliosis
Call me a psycho-skitso freak
And I'll call you by your name (dick-anus)
excerpt from
Hokus Pokus
Close ya eyes, open up ya mouth, and count to ten,
Dont wanna, huh? cuz ya know my nuts are goin in,
Im twisted, Ill cut ya finger off, and stick it in ya butt
Ooouuuuhhhhhéand glue it shut
excerpt from
House of Horrors
While I feel the lyrics speak for themselves for the most part, I give credit where it is due and a few of the musical arrangements here are superb. The album is a tease in this way, such talents as Alice Cooper, Slash and even Steve Jones from The Sex Pistols lend cameo appearances and though some tracks are better then others Mike E. Clarks production is quite solid. Tracks such as
The Great Milenko,
Hokus Pokus,
Boogie Woogie Wu &
Hellelujah hit their mark in the realms of evil circus and horror music, complimenting the “dark carnival” theme perfectly using organs, distorted guitars, and obscure percussion samples to a very sinful and alluring effect. In counterpoint other tracks such as
How Many Times &
Under The Moon are dark and brooding, led by bass and minimalistic beats they are a very angry accompaniment to the dwelling in evil glee approach some of the songs on here use making for an awkward mix. Everything on this album is more or less a balance between these two extremes in terms of arrangements, some tracks musically lesser then others but almost all of them having one thing in common being that Violent J and Shaggy inevitable waste them as background music to their somewhat dislikeable, unfunny personalities. Fortunately there is a near saving grace on this album where both lyrics and music almost work together consistently, in the form of
Halls of Illusion. Playing a Phlegyas type character between them, Violent J & Shaggy guide a few choice people through the illusion of a perfect middle-american life as they take them on a ride to hell only to shatter it and describe in graphic detail how sinful their life was and the eternal punishment that awaits them. It is well structured and works in a sense, but a chilling satire of middle-american life? Not quite, but its probably the closest they have ever come.
In short
The Great Milenko has some good musical production which is used ineptly as a vehicle for a pair of lyrically talentless, juvenile men who have come across a few inspired moments but created very little here that isn't cringe worthy. Whilst some people are far more extreme in their opinions against this group then is really fair and this is a musical embarrassment at times, it is not all bad and there are a few songs on here I dare say I like for a number of reasons. Unfortunately sorting out the wheat from the chaff is not something the music listener likes to do often, and when most of an album is poor there is very little to defend it as a whole when only a few things are objectively good about it.
