Adam Graham from the Detroit News recently interviewed the Insane Clown Posse. In this interview Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope discuss a plethora of topics including The Gathering, album sales, Dark Lotus, ICP’s next album, the FBI lawsuit and more.

You can read the full interview below.

From Detroit News:

Last month, notorious Detroit horror-rap duo Insane Clown Posse threw a benefit concert for Aaron Spencer, a devoted fan of the group who died in January due to liver failure. Members of ICP’s team visited Spencer in his final days, and the Dayton, Ohio, show raised money to help Spencer’s family pay for his medical bills.

For ICP, the controversial outfit whose fans have been branded a gang by the FBI, the show was an important step in realigning its focus going forward. The pair — leader Joseph “Violent J” Bruce and his sidekick Joey “Shaggy 2 Dope” Utsler — is fed up with being seen as villains in the music business and getting treated like a sideshow attraction, and they are standing up to make sure they are remembered as more than just a stain on music’s record books.

“The FBI ain’t just gonna come (dismiss) our legacy and say, ‘They’re just a gang.’ That’s our legacy you’re talking about,” Bruce says.

These are transitional times for the grease-painted duo, whose circus of a career stretches 20-plus years. Feeling the pinch of depleted record sales, the group has undergone a reorganization of its business, recently cutting two-thirds of its staff at its Farmington Hills-based record company, Psychopathic Records.

And the group is still paying back vendors from last year’s Gathering of the Juggalos, the lowest-attended event in the 14-year history of ICP’s infamous annual fan festival, which left them $700,000 in the hole. But this year the Gathering has a new home, and ICP has a new outlook.

“We’re trying to turn over a fresh leaf, man,” says Bruce, his voice a mix of weariness and optimism. “Hopefully some freshness comes out of it.”

Bruce is sitting next to Utsler in the living room of his Wixom home, which is filled with professional wrestling memorabilia and trinkets collected from throughout ICP’s career. The property is neatly tucked away in the woods, and is the kind of place you’re not going to find unless you’re looking for it.

There are a couple of golf carts on the property and a row of black SUVs in the driveway. In a converted pole barn a few hundred feet from Bruce’s front door is a brand new recording studio, where Bruce and Utsler are cleaning up tracks for the new album from Dark Lotus, ICP’s group with its cohorts Twiztid and Blaze Ya Dead Homie.

The news of the album was big for the group’s fans, who are at the center of ICP’s current battle with the FBI. The feds labeled the group’s fans, known as Juggalos, as a “loosely organized hybrid gang” in a 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment report, and the pair is now involved in a costly and time-consuming fight with the FBI to remove that designation. In January, ICP announced it was teaming with the ACLU of Michigan to fight the ruling, which the group says takes the ICP’s entire history and stamps it as “ugly.”

In calling the Juggalos a gang, the government argued some Juggalos have been involved in felony assaults, thefts, robberies and drug sales. “Transient, criminal Juggalo groups pose a threat to communities due to the potential for violence, drug use/sales, and their general destructive and violent nature,” the report read in part. Christopher Allen of the FBI’s office of public affairs said the agency would not comment on the matter because of pending litigation.

Bruce and Utsler say the gang label has unfairly criminalized the group’s fans. At best, they’re looking for a silent victory in the case. If they don’t win, they are proud that they at least went down swinging.

“Us fighting it is more important than us winning it,” says Bruce, 41. “If we don’t fight it, it shows we don’t (care) what happens to our fans, and that’s terrible. The victory here would be to get the names off the list, and then slowly let people know we have a legacy here.”

That legacy spans 12 studio albums, numerous side projects, solo albums and EPs. Since the group’s debut album, “Carnival of Carnage” in 1992, they have hardly slowed down. Later this year, the group will hunker down in the studio to record its next album, a “raw and gritty” set they say they hope to release this time next year.

First up is the Dark Lotus album, due out at this year’s Gathering. Even though the event is three months away, it has already been a drama-frought affair. After last year’s disastrous festival, ICP decided to move the event’s location to a site in central Missouri from Hogrock Campground in southern Illinois. After tickets went on sale, residents of the surrounding community threatened to boycott the site if the festival took place. The uproar caused ICP to look for a new location. Owners of a property outside of Columbus, Ohio, reached out to the group, and now the Gathering of the Juggalos will unfold July 23-27 in Thornville, Ohio.

The event has gained mainstream attention in recent years due to its general air of lawlessness. Nudity is prevalent, drugs are sold openly, and talent is oftentimes pelted with flying garbage from the audience. Case in point: In 2012, professional wrestler Ric Flair walked off stage after being hit with objects thrown from the crowd.

Author Nathan Rabin, whose 2013 book “You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me” (Scribner), focused on his adventures traveling to the Gathering of the Juggalos. Rabin says ICP is of two minds on fan behavior: “One the one hand, they want to be the benevolent overseers of this culture that is known for being wild and reckless and uninhibited by the laws of man. On the other hand, this is this world they’ve created, but you cannot control it, and sometimes it gets scary and sometimes it gets out of control, and that can be pretty disconcerting. And it puts them in a weird place.”

The Gathering of the Juggalos is policed by private security, and they say bringing in regular security would negatively impact the vibe of the festival. “We want people to come and enjoy themselves and let loose, but on the same token, we don’t want people to burn the place down,” says Utsler, 39. “We want to be able to carry this on, not get shut down.”

Financially, the festival nearly did get shut down; Bruce and Utsler say they’ve never made money off the Gathering. “One year we only lost $15,000,” says Bruce, talking about the event’s most financially successful year.

Part of ICP’s financial issues can be attributed to the group’s decline in album sales. ICP’s last album, 2012’s “The Mighty Death Pop,” sold around 100,000 copies, a far cry from the million-plus copies the group sold of their breakthrough album, 1997’s “The Great Milenko.”

“The world is just not based on buying CDs anymore, and that’s happening to us, too,” Bruce says. “We still tour and play for the same crowds we’ve always played for, but our CD sales are going down and down and down.”

That is one reason the group recently cut its staff at Psychopathic Records from 25 employees to seven. One of the terminated employees, the group’s former publicist, Andrea Pellegrini, is suing ICP and Psychopathic Records for sexual harassment. Bruce and Utsler deny the allegations.

Going forward, the group was planning a fall tour with cartoon metal outfit GWAR, which is now likely off due to the March 25 death of GWAR lead singer Dave “Oderus Urungus” Brockie.

ICP is also waiting to hear if Fuse network will order a third season of “ICP Theater,” a half-hour show where J and Shaggy goof on popular music videos, “Beavis and Butthead”-style.

The show for Aaron Spencer was the first of what the group plans to be many benefit concerts.

“I never thought I’d have the strength for something like that, but now that I realize I do, I want to do it more,” Bruce says. The guys have another benefactor in mind for their next benefit show, and they’re looking to always have someone on deck on their “hook-up list,” as Bruce calls it.

The benefit shows are a way of giving back to fans, a move the group says they hope will change perceptions about ICP and their intentions.

“We’re letting everyone know what page we’re on,” says Bruce. “We’re good guys.”

Websites:

• Detroitnews.com