Or being a posse. Can you have a posse with just two people? It’s like that ancient question about how many grains of sand you need before you can say that you have a “heap” of it.
ICP is huge in my hometown, and the Juggalos tend to mill around in a big group (or maybe a flock… what’s the collective noun for Juggalos? A parliament of Juggalos? An exaltation of Juggalos?) around the downtown bus mall. They do tend to be white trash-y, a lot of them are high school dropouts, and some of them aren’t really up on personal hygiene, but they don’t harass people or commit violent crimes. If they’re contributing to our meth problem, then at least they’re keeping it to themselves.
As for the music - don’t see the appeal.
ICP? I have to give them major props for coming up with a creative, if bafflingly bizarre, theme for their group.
Their fans, on the other hand…well, I’ve got a little acronym of my own for them: SYC.
That stands for, “suck yak cock.”
May I politely remind everyone that the OP is your thoughts on ICP, not your thoughts on Juggalos. We all know what the prevailing opinion of Juggalos is, especially around here. So let’s not get too personal with the disdain, especially since several resident SDMB Juggalos have already posted.
Now as a Juggalo myself I will say without hesitation that the vast majority of material in the ICP catalog (and the Psychopathic Records catalog for that matter) is crap. And it’s not like there’s an ebb and flow to it; it’s all through everything they’ve done. Dog Beats? Awful. The Tempest? There’s a few good tracks (“Haunted Bumps” in particular, with “Growing Again” and “Hum Drum Boogie” providing some amusement value) but again most of it is crap. I have one actual ICP album (Hell’s Pit) and I never listen to it because listening to every song in a row is just not worth it. And while I have downloaded everything they’ve ever done (along with all their associates- ABK, Blaze, Twiztid, even the Axe Murder Boyz) most of it is just taking up hard drive space because I never listen to it and never will.
Having said that, they have some moments of absolute lyrical genius and they say things that no one else comes close to saying. Eminem is going to chop up his wife and dump her body somewhere? Ooooh, edgy! ICP is going to FUCK A BEEHIVE! Or sucker punch a gorilla and then try to run with a banana hanging out of their ass. Or compare Violent J’s mom with “a big fuckin’ smelly ass farm llama!” ICP is totally unique in this regard. No one else even comes close in combining such a raunchy and funny mixture of sex, violence and comedy.
I think, for a lot of people, its really hard to separate the band from the fans, since the fan scene is such a big part of the deal. It’s like looking at KISS without acknowledging the KISS Army, or Jimmy Buffett without his Parrotheads.
I’ve known some pretty cool Juggalos, and dated a Juggalette a number of years back. I’ve had a number of them as students in my mentoring sessions at a university. There may be idiots galore in the scene, but having come from my own scenes-full-of-morons (punk rock, industrial, and rave… and, yes, I know the last is usually seen as mutually incompatible with the first), they don’t bug me. Invariably, there are some smart kids in those groups. Yeah, there are smart Juggalos. For every dork with “Down with the Clown” tattoos who just drinks and smokes out, there’s another Juggalo who’s working to put himself through school with absolutely no support from parents. (And I still don’t get why the clown face paint worn by some is seen as bizarre by outsiders; why was it okay for KISS fans to paint themselves up in the 70s, but not okay for ICP fans today?)
Anyway, looking at ICP’s music separate from the fans… it’s okay. The music itself is so-so, the lyrics and ideas are often hilarious. I get the same vibe when I’m checking out the /b/tards online; what seems like meaningless gross-out/black humor has a subversive and sometimes interesting undercurrent. My mom (62 a few weeks ago) even digs 'em and stood in line to get their autographs at a record store appearance a few years back.
I like ICP’s music. Blaaam! makes me giggle.
Juggalos make me want to punch a nun.
You can say this in any other thread. But this is ICP we’re talking about. So give it another try.
You’d like to do what to a nun? 
This word - I really do not fuckin’ think it means what you think it means.
I thought Juggalos were fans of Psychopathic Label bands, no? Surely they have more bands than just ICP.
No, it’s entirely possible to be Down with the Clown while acknowledging that the vast majority of material in their (gigantic) catalog isn’t really worth listening to. There’s nothing that says in order to be a Juggalo you have to like all their music plus Big Money Hustlas plus the wrestling, etc.
FWIW, I have 49 favorites. But this is out of the 800+ songs in my ICP directory and 776 more in the Psychopathic Records directory. In any case, I’m more interested in the original question rather than trying to answer the age old question of “What is a Juggalo?”
Blender magazine rated them as the worst band of all time not too long ago. I agree whole heartedly and lose a bit of respect for anyone who enjoys them or thinks they are anything more than a couple of guys who weren’t tough enough to wrestle but still wanted to get dumb white kid’s money.
This, of course, is my humble opinion, YMMV.
(And yes, I’ve listened to quite a bit of thier stuff, having had friends who thought they were wonderful. And yes, I would lump those friends into the “dumb white kids” category. Not trying to pick a fight, just weighing in.)
Juggalos make me want to [expletive] a nun in her [censored] and use her habit to smoke some [naughty]*
*Wal-mart Edit!
Stupid-ass bullshit. They have some really great beats every once in a while, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed some tracks on, I think, The Calm. But overall, their body of work is just a bunch of stupid-ass bullshit, especially their movie, Big Money Hustlas or whatever. I lost brain cells watching that shit.
(I have a couple of friends who are way into it and they force-feed me that crap. I don’t hang out with them much anymore. On the other hand, now I know what bbs2k’s name means.)
The mythology of the whole thing, and their stupid-ass made-up words*…man, it pisses me off. They think they’re so damn clever. It’s like a couple of 12-year-olds got together and decided to make a movie, except they ended up making 50 rap albums instead, and these guys have undying legions of fans. I automatically assume that anyone who listens to ICP has the maturity of a 13-year-old alcoholic.
- Fucking Juggalo…apparently it comes from the fact that all of the guys in their recording company had names that started with J. That’s the stupidest, most unabashedly prepubescent bullshit I’ve ever heard of from a hardcore rap group.
Or, this.
I know a Juggalo pro wrestler. Couple of 'em, actually. It really is sad.
Their music was recognizably Christian from their first album on.
Seconded. And, by the way, almost all of the Juggalos I’ve ever met are totally clean drug-wise. Sometimes I wish they’d smoke a bowl, put on some DJ Shadow or Deltron and learn about real hip-hop music.
Unless you lived in Detroit, I doubt it was the band.
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
All of this. I listen to as diverse a selection of music as I possibly can, and I HATE it when people assume something is bad because it’s offensive, or loud, or too fuzzed out, or whatever. The ability to appreciate a wide variety of music is something that I respect the hell out of. But not ICP. ICP is bad music. There is nothing redeeming to be found in it that can’t be found elsewhere, done better. It is a travesty that anyone could consider them as legitimate “artists”. They embody everything wrong with popular music, in that they lack any discernible talent, and yet have legions of fans because of their showmanship. Some would say that their showmanship IS their talent, but, to me, their stage performances and invented mythology and face painting reeks of mass produced bullshit designed solely to sell tee-shirts and hats. If in ten years we find out that ICP was created by the Faygo corporation, just remember that I called it.
[Hijack] You know, not all furries are perverted sexual deviants worthy of condemnation and scorn. I’ve been a furry for years, not in response to some repressed Freudian instinct; I simply think that anthropomorphized animals are cute, that it’d be fun to have ears and a tail and be that soft and cuddly, and that having some of the innate abilities posessed by animals (such as enhanced senses, speed, reflexes, endurance, etc) would be cool. What’s more, I’m fairly representative of the majority of the furry fandom - people who simply like anthro art and who, in the words of another fur on these boards, “loves them some fuzzy critter people”.
To be fair, I understand where your ideas about what we’re like are derived from - there is a small, but very vocal and obnoxious subset of furries who are responsible for virtually all of the negative stereotypes associated with the fandom. That said, please do not be so quick to judge us all on the basis of their behavior, and I would appreciae it if you’d refrain from such comments in the future - if not because you understand where I’m coming from, then at least because it offends me and people like me, who have done nothing to deserve your derision. Thank you.[/Hijack]
And speaking of small but vocal and obnoxious subset… I think ICP’s fans are responsible for a lot of the latent hostility towards the band. The clowns have their act, their “schtick”, and it’s what they enjoy and it’s what they’re good at. When adoring fanboys start blowing their accomplishments vastly out of proportion, though, they set the bar so high that the group cannot help but fall short of expectations and appear inadequate.
In other words, if people didn’t think so highly of them, they wouldn’t seem so bad. It’s the Thomas Kinkade effect.
A Hulkamaniac. 
I honestly don’t know what negative stereotypes you’re talking about, besides dressing up in animal costumes. Are you saying you don’t dress up in animal costumes? If that’s what you’re saying, then consider my ignorance fought. If not, then back to the bottom of the geek hierarchy with you (which, in my opinion, is lower than juggalos, but perhaps only equal to - not below - LARPers.) Bottom line is adults are free to dress up and play imagination all they want, and the other 99.9% of us are free to laugh at you. Don’t act like you’re some protected class who can’t help the way they are.
TAKE. A. DEEP. BREATH.
Are you calm? Good. Now listen carefully.
My post was not a slam on furries. It was a subtle reference to the (I thought fairly well known) Geek Hierarchy.
Personally, I don’t have any strong feelings one way or another about furries. I think y’all are a little weird (even knowing the sexual deviant stuff is mostly bunk, furries scare me just a little), but you could say that about any number of fandoms I belong to.
So again, relax.
Sorry, I just get tired of hearing the same “it’s-cool-to-hate-furries” rhetoric over and over again; it’s a pet peeve of mine and admittedly something I’m sensitive about. Still, that’s no excuse for biting your head off, especially considering I did so primarily because I lumped you in with the juvenile 4chan delinquents who bash furs so viciously all the time. Categorizing you as such is little better than doing what I accused you of doing to me, and as such was wholly inappropriate. You have my apologies.
That said… Now that I know that my own bizarre subculture is not under attack, let’s get back to attacking someone ELSE’S bizarre subculture instead! 
Colour me amazed. I just checked them out on Spotify.
I actually like some of their stuff.