Insane Clown Posse are a band that get incredible amounts of ridicule the world over. Luckily for me, here in little ol' Wales, ICP and their seemingly endless armies of retarded, redneck juggalo "fans" aren't really a subject for ridicule, as they don't really exist. When I was big into ICP as a teenager, I didn't know a creeping shit about any of this juggalo crap. I'm not claiming ignorance as an excuse; I knew that fans painted themselves up for gigs, and that ICP always referred to fans as juggalos. But, that was about it. That's no big deal, right? I mean, Slipknot call their fans "maggots", or in a different musical world, Lady Gaga refers to her die-hard followers as "little monsters". The juggalo phenomena that has swept America over the last 15/20 years really didn't register with me until it was too late. Is it just me, or have "juggalos" become the idiots that ICP hated on in these first few releases? Just look at any juggalo story you find online. ICP would have never stood for that shit - back in the day, at least. The stupid, toothless, idiot fucktards that ICP spent so much time hating on have become their main fan-base. Dafuck?
Anyways, on with the review! I can't help it that ICP themselves have fallen into a PC-friendly formula, churning out a bunch of crap that isn't really rap or hip hop...or anything of any substance come to think of it (after the Joker's Cards finished they fell the fuck off, and hard), but when this act emerged out of the murky smog of Detroit in the 90s, they brought with them a slightly disturbing, yet wholly unique performance and sound. It is more than apparent that ICP took a lot of "inspiration" from (the excellent) Detroit rapper Esham, but so did Eminem, and anyone else who has spat violent shit over a rap beat, but by the time The Ringmaster hit the shelves, ICP were already heading in their own unique direction. When their third full length dropped (this here Riddle Box CD), the group had gained a massive local following and it's own super-funky, nasty hip hop sound, dripping in silly slasher themes and wicked rhymes which would go on to form the basis of the genre 'horrorcore'. I fuckin' hate juggalos, and I fuckin' hate ICP's weak, middle-America-white-majority-pandering material of the last decade - but their early shit is some of the best rap music in the fuckin' world. This shit fuckin' rules!
Musically, this is the darkest ICP record other than the intentionally-grim-as-fuck Hell's Pit. Lyrical themes are in the ballparks of necrophilia ("Cemetery Girl"), cannibalism ("Dead Body Man"), physical and mental retardation ("Three Rings"), paedophilia ("Lil' Somethin' Somethin'"), murder ("12"), murder of rednecks ("Chicken Huntin'"), murder of children ("Toy Box"), murder of public officials ("The Joker's Wild"), murder of pensioners ("Ol' Evil Eye").....you get the picture. And yet, the band thank God in the sleeve notes. I personally don't understand the massive fucking contradictions here, but what can you do? Fuck it. Shit is amazing.
This was originally released in 1995 on some fucking backwards combination of Jive Records, Battery Records and the band's own Psychopathic Records. Also, please excuse the dire state that my copy of The Riddle Box is in, I haven't exactly taken care of it!
WHEN ALL SIX HAVE RISEN, THE END WILL CONSUME US ALL.
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