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| Artist: Insane Clown Posse |
| Album: The Great Milenko |
| Genre: White Rap/Horrocore |
| Producers: Mike E. Clark and ICP. |
| Tracks: 13 tracks clocking in at just under 54 minutes. |
| Label: Jive |
| For fans of: Beastie Boys, Gravediggaz |
| Year of Release: 1997 |
|
Date of Review: January 25, 1998 |
| LYRICS: 1 |
| FLOW: 1 |
| MESSAGE: 4 |
| BEATS: 3 |
| ORIGINALITY: 6 |
| HYPE: 6 |
| CONSISTENCY: 2 |
|
SCORE: 27% |
| Information on my ratings system. |
Anyway, I'm sure a few of you have heard of ICP. For those that haven't, let me give you a little history. . .
I first heard of Insane Clown Posse on rec.music.hip-hop around the beginning of last year. From my understanding, they seemed to be a sort of underground Horrorcore group. Some people were saying some nice things about them. . . I recall reading a post that read "these guys are giving Hip-Hop something it really needs right now: originality." I would occasionally hear their name, as they seemed to have quite a following on the internet (I noticed tons of homepages devoted to them), and I decided that if I ever saw a release by them, I would pick it up, just to find out what they're all about. After all, they couldn't be too bad. . .
Fastforward to the summer of '97. I saw a couple posts on rec.music.hip-hop (and, about a week later, a bulletin on MTV News) that said Insane Clown Posse's album, The Great Milenko, had been pulled off of shelves by Disney, the distibutor of Hollywood Records, ICP's label, only six hours after being released, because Disney seemingly buckled under pressure from Southern Baptists, who were pissed about the whole situation with Ellen and were threatening to boycott them. . . needless to say, I thought this was pretty funny news, considering the fact that I was going to have bought this album, and quickly hunted down a copy during the next few weeks (a few record stores had kept copies, going against Disney's orders). Well, I finally found one (hidden behind a few Prodigy albums), and quickly bought it, knowing that it could be a collector's item, in addition to a potentially cool album.
I'm not sure if this is a collector's item or not, but forget about it being a cool album. . .
The Clowns later signed with Island Records and re-released The Great Milenko with three more tracks which weren't included on the original version. . . well, I don't know how valid this review is, since it's of the original version with three less tracks, but I KNOW I wouldn't go out and buy this album again. . . there's a good chance that this is one of the worst albums I've ever heard in my life. . .
The Great Milenko begins with an intro track titled, you guessed it, "Intro." Creative, eh? Anyway, Alice Cooper, of all people, does a spoken word thing here, introducing you to the deranged world of Insane Clown Posse. . . this was actually cool the first time I heard it, as it's really silly, but there's no reason to listen to it more than once or twice.
"A parade of freaks, jugglers, and death."
My first impressions were: so far, so good. . . at least these guys didn't take themselves so seriously.
"Great Milenko" is an instrumental track that follows "Intro." Lyrically, there's not much here. I guess the music in the background is entertaining enough. It's pretty much a clip of Alice Cooper saying "Great Milenko" over and over again, followed by laughter, with the clowns sometimes coming in and spurting some nonsense, all over incredibly silly-sounding carnival music.
It isn't until "Hokus Pokus" that we get to hear ICP rap. . . and guess what? They SUCK.
"Abracadabra, boom shaka day.
I'm Violent J, and I'm back like a vertebrae."
"Shazam, bam, shagalagalokus.
Shaggy the clown back like Scoliosis."
Hmmmmmmm. . . it wasn't funny the first time, so I don't know why they tried it twice. . .
This song gets REALLY annoying by the end. . . just like almost every song on the album.
"Piggy Pie" is a revenge story of sorts, I guess. Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope are rapping about going around and killing rich people, I think.
"He likes to f*ck his sister
And drink his moonshine
A typical redneck filthy f*ckin swine"
"I bounced off his head and did a Jackie Chan over the gate"
Like a lot of the songs on The Great Milenko, there's some annoying heavy-metal guitars in here. And, of course, the lyrics do nothing to help. . .
"And then I watch the moon take the form of the devil
And pull it out the sky, and beat it with a 'shevel' "
Violent J actually pronounces "shovel" as "shevel" to rhyme. . . it sounds pretty lame.
At the end of this track, there is a very un-funny skit about a suicidal kid calling a help-line. An attempt at dark humor, perhaps? I'm not laughing.
"How Many Times" is another lame song. ICP are pretty much just complaining about how bad their days are.
"How many times will you honk your horn and say f*ck you?
Now what the f*ck does that do?
Ya feel better now? I didn't let ya pass
How 'bout I stop my car, and beat your f*ckin ass?"
We seem to have a very cynical duo here.
"I remember one time I was pulled over,
Handcuffed, the cop was like, show's over
People watching, hoping that he shoots me
I just wanted to choke their f*cking heads!"
"How many times will a crackhead smoke crack?
And ask me for some money cuz he wants crack?"
I guess there's only so many words that you can rhyme with "crack". . .
"I was out robbin liquor stores
When you were just a n*t-stain in your mama's drawers"
On a positive note, this track ends with a skit that, unlike the one about the suicidal kid, is actually pretty funny. This one is about a kid living in a suburban town having fantasies about being a "gangsta."
"Dogg, I peels caps all day long, mutha f*cka. The call me the big wheeler cap peeler, yaknowwhatI'msayin? I run this whole mutha f*cka. The whole block, dogg. They call me the king. The big king. King killa big wheeler cap peeler, yeah. That's what they call me around this mutha f*cka. I run this b*tch. I got this b*tch locked down. I'm a big gang banga, man. I'm a gang banga mutha f*cka."
"Southwest Voodoo" isn't as terrible of a track as some of the ones on this album, but it doesn't do anything to make me respect ICP anymore, either. It does have a cool little sample going through it, though. "Voodoo, runnin' from my magic". . . I thought it was cool enough.
"Follow me, and join us as we pray
To the seventeen moods of Koonga Dell-Ray."
"You think voodoo's fake?
Come to the graveyard, I'll make the dead wake"
You can see, though, that the lyrics are of a, um, less than desirable quality.
Now. . . maybe I'll get my "Hip-Hop Nation" membership card taken away for admitting this, and I'm kinda embarassed to say this aloud, but I actually, um, kinda liked "Halls Of Illusions." This is by far the best track on Milenko. Not that that's saying much, but this song is kinda cool. Really.
"Great Milenko, wave your wand Don't look now, your life is gone This is all because of you! What you got yourself into"
I guess this song can best be described as being a sorta It's a Wonderful Life in reverse. . . people are shown how much better the lives of everyone around them would be if they were dead. Maybe I'm looking too deep into it and giving ICP too much credit, but that's what I got out of it.
Example- Here's an "illusion":
"What do we have here? Oh dear, no way
It looks like the kids in the okay
Your daughter's chillin up in college, top grades
And your son's a f*ckin doctor, phat paid"
Now here's reality:
"Back to reality, your son's on crack
And your daughter's got n*t stains on her back
And they both f*ckin smell like sh*t
And live in the gutter
And sell crack to each other"
After the illusion, ICP proceed to kill the poor S.O.B.
Sure, the rhymes are pretty ridiculous, but this song was able to do it for me, anyway.
Being the Guns N Roses fan that I am (well, not really, but I did think
Appetite For Destruction was an excellent album), Slash's guitar playing
added a special touch to the track.
"What Is A Juggalo?" is up next. . . how can I explain this track? I won't. I'll just quote some lyrics. . .
"What is a juggalo? Let me think for a second.
Oh! He gets butt-naked
And then he walks through the streets
Winking at freaks
With a 2 liter stuck in his butt-cheeks."
"What is a juggalo?
A f*ckin lunatic
Somebody with a rope tied to his d*ck
Then he jumps out a ten-story window
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh!"
It's doubtful that anyone that takes themselves seriously whatsoever could write lyrics like this. . . then again, this is ICP. . . oh yeah, the music backing this track up is lame, too. . . so lame that Shaggy 2 Dope stops rapping and says, "This sh*t is wack" to producer Mike E. Clark at one point.
"What is a juggalo?
Well, he ain't a phoney
He'll walk up and bust a n*t in your macaroni
And watch you sit there and finish up the last bit
Cuz you're a stupid-ass, dumb, f*ckin idiot"
What is a juggalo? Let me think for a second. . . A moron that dresses up like a clown, says a bunch of swear words, and then makes a bunch of money selling rap albums to suburban white kids with no taste in music? Yeah, that sounds like it to me. . .
"House of Horrors" isn't too much better. A song about a haunted house, but not a very scary one. . .
"Ya see, bam, cuz I'm about to scare ya
Bbbblblblblbl, okay now I dare ya"
"Bblbblbblbbblbb! Ya know what that means?
It don't mean nothin, ha ha!
But it scared ya, cuz people don't be doin that sh*t"
For some reason Violent J thinks he's scary. . . (by the way, that Bblbblbblbbblbb was the best I could come to reproducing in text form the sound J makes)
"I'm a cereal killer, it's a bad habit
I killed Tony, Lucky Charms, and the silly rabbit"
"I'll bend you over, and tie you up to a pole
And stretch your n*ts back, and fling 'em up your butthole"
"I'm so scary, they call me Joey Terrifying"
Lyrical geniuses, eh?
The next track on The Great Milenko, "Hellalujah," actually has a message to it. . . shocking, isn't it? I'll have to give ICP some props here. This song is a dis on so-called "Christian" televangelists, who are really just crooks out for their own monetary gain.
"Take your paycheck, and send me half
And I'll send you God's autograph
I'll get you Allah's, and Buddha's too
Even Zeus, I dont give a f*ck who
Just send me that money"
"Make the checks out in my name
Me or God it's all the same"
Now, I said I'd give them some props for putting a good message in there, but I never said this was a good song. It is above-average by the extremely low standards on the rest of this album, though.
Follwing "Hellalujah" is "Down With The Clown." This song was entertaining enough, with more silly carnival-type music. But, as you can probably guess, it's still a pretty lousy song by anyone's standards.
"What if I grew another f*cking head And his name was Violent Ed And he head-butt me every time I cussed I would need two microphones when I bust"
"Or what if I sold out like a b*tch
And took the make-up off and went soft
Called myself Detroit Southwest Lover
And put my ugly ass face on the album cover
Went R&B, Top Ten hit
And I had Jodeci sing all over our sh*t"
The thought of ICP doing a song with Jodeci is pretty hilarious.
"I got problems; I'm haunted by a carnival."
"Just Like That" is just a lame, wack track. A minute and 23 seconds of pure CRAP. Wack lyrics, wack beat, wack everything. . . ladies and gentlemen, this is Insane Clown Posse.
"In the fridge there's a Faygo, it tastes ill
Cuz it's flatter then a b*tch on a Big-Wheel"
The final track of Milenko is "Pass Me By." It doesn't really fit in very well with the rest of the album, but isn't too terrible of a song, either. Shaggy actually has a halfway decent flow on here (well, at least better than his generally completely awful flow on the rest of the album).
"I got shot, blowe!
The murder was heinous
The bullet went in my eyeball and out my anus"
"I'm headed up to the show, I'm gonna see Jimi Hendrix, Selena, and Eazy-E"
Not the best song in the world, but certainly better than most of the "music" on this album.
So there you have it, The Great Milenko. What's the verdict on this album? Well, that's not as easy to say as you might think it would be. . . as a Hip-Hop album, this is one of the worst I've ever heard. The heavy-metal style ICP tries to present is extremely poorly done (except for on "Halls of Illusions"). The lyrics are awful, and these guys can't flow. . . they make Puffy and Mase seem like Rakim and KRS-One. They're that bad. I'll say that Violent J has a little bit better of a flow than Shaggy, but still leaves a whole lot to be desired.
But, this album does have some entertainment value in it. Most of the crowd I hang around with really doesn't listen to rap music at all (I live in Valparaiso, IN, where about 99% of the population is upper-middle-class white and the most underground rapper anyone knows of is Master P) but think that Insane Clown Posse isn't bad, believe it or not. I guess it's like this. . . Sometimes watching a really bad, cheesy B-grade horror flick can be fun. Nobody would ever say that some terrible space monster movie was a quality film, but, they could say that it's fun to watch. ICP can be fun to listen to on occasion. . . Actually, ICP fit the B-grade description quite nicely. The terrible dialogue could be likened to ICP's moronic lyrics, the cheap props are just like Mike E. Clark's awful production, and the blunders in casting could be similar to having two white guys that can't flow make a rap album. . . I could never recommend anyone to spend money on this album, as it's of very low quality, but I can say that it is fun to listen to the first few times. . . but after a while, the clowns' voices get too annoying, the beats get on your nerves, and the lyrics seem even more stupid than before. This album obviously wasn't meant for extended playing. Are you willing to spend $17.99 (which is about what this album should be going for in a lot of stores) for a listen or two, a novelty disc to play for your friends when you're really bored?
I didn't think so. This dark carnival just isn't worth the price of admission. . .
ICP just don't do Horrorcore very well. Peep Six Feet Deep by Gravediggaz. RZArector, Prince Paul, Grym Reaper, and Fruitkwan were much scarier, funnier, more entertaining, and more talented than these losers. Insane Clown Posse are a pale imitation. And I do mean PALE (hey, I'm white, so I can make as many white boy jokes as I want, okay?).
In the end, I'll give this album a 2 out of 10. . . I was thinking about giving it a 1, but it gets an extra point because I thought "Halls Of Illusions" was actually a cool song, and every so often the guys did make me laugh. Other than that, this is the lowest of the lows. . . ICP suffer from an extreme lack of taste, which in itself wouldn't be such a horrible thing, but, more importantly, suffer from an even more extreme lack of talent, which IS a pretty horrible thing. Still, I know quite a few people will be playing this one. I guess it goes to show, if you act like dumb white boys, dumb white boys will buy your albums.
---Steve Clark
Did I get it wrong? E-mail me at stevec@netnitco.net with all comments or questions you may have.
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