Insane Clown Posse Get ‘Lost’ & ‘Found’ Working on Pair of New Albums
The FBI and other haters be damned: “Business continues” for the Insane Clown Posse, with not one but two new albums and plenty of live work headed our way this year.
The Detroit rap duo will drop the first album, Lost, on April 28 — group member Violent J’s 43rd birthday. It’s successor and companion piece, Found, is due three months later, Violent J (aka Joe Bruce) tells Billboard. “The Lost album is a really intense, dark record,” he says. “There’s no comedy on it, and ICP is known for comedy. It’s about life without hope or without faith, and it’s just fast and pulse-pounding beats and dark. For me, it’s about not having God in your life and being lost and worrying about death, worrying about everything, like you’re missing a link. It’s looking at the world through negative lenses.”
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Found, meanwhile, will live up to its more optimistic title. “It’s much more positive,” Violent J said. “We bring the comedy aspect of it and songs about sex and good times and the funny songs and the upbeat songs — all that is going to be on the Found record. We’re having a much better time in the studio for that one.” And, he adds, the mixed-but-complementary tone of the two albums is “very reflective” of where he and partner Shaggy 2 Dope (Joe Utsler) find themselves these days.
“I think we’re both somewhere in the middle of Lost and Found,” Violent J explains. “I’m not gonna lie; I feel like I’m looking for God sometimes. I would love to all of a sudden be saved and feel all happy and everything. I’m not there. I’m looking for it. I feel like I’m in the right direction — that’s why I feel good about singing this message and coming out and saying, ‘If you’re lost, this is how you’re gonna feel, and if you’re found, this is how you’re gonna feel,’ and putting that out there and making Juggalos think about it. I think it’s going to help me and Shaggy as people and getting closer to being in a better place ourselves.”
While Lost is completed, Violent J says Found is “about 75 percent done.” Rather than regular collaborator Mike E. Clark, who’s busy with other commitments — including Kid Rock — this time ICP worked with a variety of other producers to come up with beats and arrangements for the two albums.
Though a planned tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 1995’s Riddle Box album has been sidelined for now, ICP plans to be on the road starting in the spring and going through much of the summer and into the fall, likely finishing with its annual Hallowicked show in Detroit. ICP is also planning another Gathering of the Juggalos this summer and continues to fight the FBI’s designations of the Juggalos as a criminal gang; it’s currently appealing a Federal District Court dismissal of its initial complaint. But most importantly, Violent J says, the music will go on, undeterred.
“It’s important to let everybody know that business continues, that no matter what happens, what we go through or what happens to us, nobody’s gonna be able to stop us from doing what we do,” he says. “”We’re always going to be here to provide an outlet of some fun for people’s lives, man. Juggalos that enjoy being a Juggalo, we’re gonna be able to grow old together. We don’t do this and not enjoy it, y’know? We do this ’cause we love it, and we’ll let everybody know that.”
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