I was going to call this article The Complete Guide To Understanding Juggalos, but then I quickly realized that I don’t really understand Juggalos at all. I do, however, know how to make fun of them, and as the music video for their song “Miracles” (seen above) shows, there is no shortage of material. In fact, poking fun at these clown-themed hip hop “artists” and their fans is almost a cliche, since it’s been done so many times. Even Saturday Night Live has gotten in on it!
For those of you who don’t know, Juggalos (or Juggalettes, for the ladies) are a quasi-subculture comprised entirely of fans of the rap duo Insane Clown Posse. These fans, most of them white people, love to get together wearing clown makeup, get drunk and stoned, and just have general rednecky fun to the tunes of ICP. Juggalos take pride in the fact that they are Juggalos, even creating their own slang and idioms, and view the Juggalo community like a big, intoxicated family. Take a look at this music video for “Juggalo Island”, where you can “let your nuts hang by the water”, and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what being a Juggalo is all about.
Every year, Psychopathic Records hosts the Gathering of the Juggalos, which is essentially a Juggalo festival that features concerts, wrestling and seminars from the ICP guys and other c-grade performers like Vanilla Ice. There are a few videos online that explain the gathering better than I will (mainly because I just can’t be bothered to watch 17 minutes of Juggalo love), so if you want to see them, click here. I’m not going to include them in this post, though. Instead, you get this ICP Glade plug-ins commercial.
Ruthless Reviews recently ran a review of one of the two – count ’em, TWO – ICP movies, Big Money Rustlas (the sequel to Big Money Hustlas), and it’s a pretty hilarious read. Mostly it’s just about the weirdness that is Insane Clown Posse, and the review of Big Money Rustlas is the following: “It’s terrible.”
I wish I had some clever way to finish off this article, but I don’t. In researching Juggalos, I guess I’ve come a bit closer to understanding them. It’s essentially a way for middle-class white folk who enjoy bad rap to feel like they are part of something bigger. People want to feel like they belong to a community no matter what their race or class, and in a way, the Juggalo subculture is a lot like a less organized, more wrestling- and nutsack-oriented church where everybody spends a lot of time intoxicated. But unlike most churches, Juggalos are extremely weird, with their clown makeup and inability to understand magnetism, and frankly, I think it might be a good idea to give them their Juggalo Island, if only so we know where they are at all times.