Those crazy clowns are at it again.
I like to bottle up and throw away my preconceptions when I listen to a new album. It’s tricky, crafting a clean slate, but it helps me foster the most rewarding listening experience possible.
That said, it was nearly impossible to escape any already unfavorable thoughts regarding the new album from Insane Clown Posse, a Detroit hip-hop duo featuring the stylings of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope: two “wicked clowns” moonlighting as rappers who are, by many standards, America’s worst musical act. They may walk the fine line between satire and utter seriousness, but most of their shtick comes across as genuinely insipid. If it’s a joke, I don’t get it. If it’s an earnest mantra, I don’t get it either. What are these nut jobs trying to prove?
We don’t get an answer on The Mighty Death Pop!, the group’s twelfth studio record. It’s a messy pastiche of street-rap threats and hair-metal choruses that sag with sloppy production and even sloppier songwriting. Everything sounds phony and cartoony, as if each song were ripped from one of those violent, mid-’80s arcade games that cost two tokens and came with plastic guns.
Sometimes, though, the Posse flirts with cultural relevancy, like on “Shooting Stars,” where the duo projectile-vomits its sadistic plans of murdering Chris Brown at the Grammy Awards, or on “Hate Her To Death,”where the two dabble in lush, down beat emo-rap — a sound that has been a modern pop mainstay — but end up sounding as if they’re mocking Frank Ocean.
Occasionally the duo produce something almost forgivable, such as the big, chanty chorus on “Juggalo Juice,”or the album closer “Forever,” which is almost beautiful in a sweet, juvenile way. But nearly everything here is punishingly amateur.
It remains to be seen whether the artists behind Insane Clown Posse are secret geniuses or earnest morons. Some love them, some hate them and some just don’t understand what they’re trying to say in the first place. I fall in the third camp. Maybe over time they’ll reveal the true motivation behind their “operation.” Then again, maybe there isn’t one to begin with.
Take a song like “Ghetto Rainbows.” The first 10 seconds are magical, but then the rapping starts. “How the f— could this be/ up in the sky/ there is a rainbow,” two voices chant. In one, swift motion, whatever credibility and interest the opening bars generated has evaporated into thin air. It’s tough to be a clown. But it can’t be tougher than listening to this record.
essner@umdbk.com
