Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Shrug-Shuffle

Note: This be a video-heavy post. It’s probably not worth your while continuing if you’re not able to view videos right now.

Back in the Napster days, and just before Eminem had released his second (mainstream) album, I was online looking for any additional Slim Shady material available, and I encountered a recording of the Insane Clown Posse’s piss-take of ‘My Name is’ called ‘Slim Anus’.


Fun as that was, it didn’t particularly interest me in the group, but for some reason the name stuck with me for quite some time.

Turns out that Insane Clown Posse, over ten years after their attempt to gain attention by piggybacking Eminem’s success*, are still around, and still making music. Their latest music video has made them something of an online phenomenon, and, well, it’s too mind boggling for me to really describe, so give it a whirl yourself:




I'm sorry, I should have warned you that the preceding video features middle-aged wiggers self-consciously boogieing to third-rate music with third-rate special effects whilst spitting despicably hateful lyrics. Hateful for the past few hundred years of human scientific progression, I mean.

There is no hope for these people. It's hard to reconcile their doe-eyed enthusiasm for all the wonderful things in everyday life with their sense of inquiry that extends as far as "I don't wanna talk to a scientist / Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed."

Domestication of animals, sound waves, heredity, the light spectrum, and large meeting places are all ascribed to some 'magical' or 'miraculous force in this video, by a pair of irony-deprived twerps who swear profusely in a pathetic attempt to elicit an emotional response in the listener. Granted, the juxtaposition between lyrics that may have been written by a six year old assigned poetry homework with the usual chest-beating of gangsta-rap is certainly hilarious, but when it's so patently unintentional, it just makes these face-paint-wearing, middle-aged white rappers look a little silly.

"MAGIC EVERYWHERE IN THIS BITCH"


What worries me is contemplating the people who pay money to listen to music like this - or the fact that these chuckleheads make enough money from talking about "shit that'll shock ya eyelids" that it has become their full time jobs. After some cursory investigation, it seems that these cretins have amassed a loyal following by incorporating lyrics that reach out to every downtrodden nitwit misfit imaginable, creating a nice community in the process. Twenty years into the process, just after their ebullient "fuck you" to scientific inquiry, the ulterior motivation behind the previous two decades of violent posturing are revealed:


According to Bruce, the group used profanity and references to violence and sex in their lyrics because "to get attention, you have to speak their language. You have to interest them, gain their trust, talk to them and show you're one of them. You're a person from the street and speak of your experiences. Then at the end you can tell them God has helped me out like this and it might transfer over instead of just come straight out and just speak straight out of religion."[90] Bruce also states that "The ending of the Joker Cards, the way we looked at it, was death. Heaven and hell. That's up to each and every juggalo [to decide]. We're not an ultra religious group. I don't go to church or anything. I like to believe in God."[54] - Via Wikipedia


Truly, to be so arrogantly stupid, you most be of the religious persuasion.


"FUCKIN' rainbows, after it rains / There's enough miracles to blow ya' brains"
If you're this ignorant, you owe it to humankind to blow your brains out


If four minutes of watching these morons doing the shrug-shuffle in front of crappy backgrounds (some stolen wholesale from Google Earth) wasn't enough to get you vexed, then feel free to watch this spoof from Saturday Night Live, which succeeds in being less absurd than the source material.


*Ironically, the ICP/Eminem ‘beef’ allegedly started because of the then-unknown Eminem trying to piggyback off of ICP’s success. (Just want to cover myself in case any juggalos come in here)

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