With Insane Clown Posse’s “Riddle Box” tour under way the press coverage and interviews are starting to be posted.

Albany Times Union, Driven By Boredom, Examiner and Faygoluvers have started releasing photo galleries and reviews from a couple of the New York shows.

Here are the links for the current tour coverage:

• SEEN: Insane Clown Posse at Upstate Concert Hall
• Insane Clown Posse @ Webster Hall – 5.9.16
• Insane Clown Posse @ Webster Hall (Gallery)
• Insane Clown Posse – Riddle Box Tour – Clifton Park – Review
• Insane Clown Posse – Riddle Box Tour – Clifton Park -Gallery
• Review: Insane Clown Posse perform ‘Riddle Box’ inside NYC’s Webster Hall

Richmond Magazine released a short Q and A they conducted with Shaggy 2 Dope. The full interview is below.

Shaggy 2 Dope (shown at right) feels like a new man. “Getting back surgery is the best thing I ever did in my life,” says the Michigan-based rapper, who is one-half of Insane Clown Posse. Shaggy — real name Joseph Utsler — went under the knife after sustaining vertebrae damage from years of stage diving and the Posse’s famous forays into professional wrestling. When Shaggy and Violent J (Joseph Bruce) emerged on the scene in 1991 amid much controversy about their graphic lyrics and cartoonish stage violence, no one could have predicted that they would still be stage diving a quarter century later. The “horror core” duo have become prolific performers, label owners and filmmakers, creating music festivals and Internet radio stations. Their often misogynistic and profane world took a peculiar — and dare one say spiritual — turn with the 2010 song “Miracles,” accompanied by one of the more notorious music videos of the age. And even though Violent J recently wrapped up a charity solo tour, the group isn’t watering down its act. The tentative title of Shaggy’s upcoming solo album is “F.T.F.O.M.F.,” and the group’s fans, called Juggalos, have been designated an official gang by the FBI. “It’s messed up,” Shaggy 2 Dope says. “Juggalos also do mad charity and donate to a lot of causes … but it’s a case of a few rotten apples in the bunch.”

Richmond magazine:You’ve been friends with Joseph Bruce since you were kids.

Shaggy 2 Dope: It’s beyond the band, beyond the group. We’re brothers, know what I’m saying? We’re the same person with two different bodies. I met him when I was 10 or 11, through my brother. We started off as backyard wrestlers. There were a lotta kids doing that, but we were really, really serious, it wasn’t a hobby. And then we got into rap and found out we could make more money that way. But it was cool because years later, we were able to go and wrestle on WCW, WWE, all of the big organizations.

RM:You guys bridged the worlds of pro-wrestling and music.

Shaggy: When we were on “Nitro” and “Raw” all the time, that’s the first time people had heard of us. But we wanted to make sure people knew about our music and not just the wrestling, because music is our career.

RM: Talk about starting off in the Detroit rap scene.

Shaggy: When we first started rapping in Detroit, everybody had a gimmick. There was Awesome Dre, he was, like, our super idol. He was old-school hip-hop. Esham, his gimmick was that he was a satanic rapper who came out of a coffin and rapped about the devil. Kid Rock, of course, was different back then. He rapped about being a country boy and driving tractors. Our gimmick is that we were clowns.

RM:You guys have a label (Psychopathic) and record new bands. What advice do you give them?

Shaggy: The game has changed so much from when we started until now. Back then, before the Internet, it was all about hitting the streets, putting up flyers, word of mouth, finding the record stores, promoting (yourself). It’s not like it is now, where you put a video up on YouTube and hope that it hits. We put in years and years of work, and we’d hear about Kid Rock selling 50,000 records and we’d say, “How’d he do that?” And it made us work even harder.

RM: You have some seriously hardcore fans, the Juggalos.

Shaggy: The beautiful thing about our fans is that it was an organic thing that naturally happened. We’re the same people as our fans, you know what I’m saying? We are the underdogs, we grew up broke, we grew up in clubs. A lot of people look down on Jugglalos, you know. They say that ICP only sells to Juggalos, but Jugglalos are people. They are people just like Taylor Swift fans are people.

RM: The FBI has Juggalos listed as a gang. How did that happen?

Shaggy: It’s worse out West. When you have your name tattooed on a kid that commits a crime, all of a sudden (the police say), “He’s a Juggalo, so he must be in a gang.” We’re in a court battle about it right now. The first trial was thrown out, and we got a different judge on appeal. It’s hurting our business. Some stores won’t carry our merchandise. But it’s also hurting human rights — a kid that has a job, provides for his mother and sisters, cracks his ass at Subway all day, gets pulled over for a speeding ticket and he has (an ICP) tattoo on his forearm — suddenly he’s in the system as a gang member. It’s insane.

RM: It’s been noted that there’s more seriousness and spirituality in the music. Would you agree?

Shaggy: Oh, no doubt. At the same time that ICP and Juggalos are labeled as a gang, we are known as a Christian band. How crazy is that? But we’ve always had a spiritual overtone. We’re not Bible thumpers, we don’t go to church, nothing like that, but it’s more about karma and what’s right and wrong. In our raps and in our subject matter, yeah, there is a lot of vulgarness to it. But there’s also a lot of positive songs that we come out with too, you know. But people just hear the cursing, so they think that we’re no-good thugs.

Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope are making their way to Wilmington, NC tonight. The tour will conclude in Canada on July 17th in Victoria, BC. A full list of tour dates is below.

Riddle Box Tour:

MAY 15 Ziggy’s By the Sea – Wilmington, NC
MAY 17 Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
MAY 19 State Theater – St. Petersburg, FL
MAY 20 Kress Live – Biloxi, MS
MAY 21 Alamo City Music Hall – San Antonio, TX
MAY 22 The Rail Club – Fort Worth, TX (Sold Out According to Venue)
MAY 23 Other Side Event Center — Tulsa, OK
MAY 25 Sunshine Theatre – Albuquerque, NM
MAY 26 The Rock – Tuscon, AZ
MAY 27 House of Blues – San Diego, CA
MAY 28 Oakland Metro – Oakland, CA
MAY 30 Ace of Spades – Sacramento, CA
MAY 31 Hawthorne Theater – Portland, OR
JUN 01 El Corazon – Seattle, WA
JUN 03 The Complex – SLC, UT
JUN 04 Butte Depot Outdoors – Butte, MT
JUN 07 Granada – Lawrence, KS
JUN 08 Turner Hall Ballroom – Milwaukee, WI
JUN 09 Big Shots – Valparaiso, IN
JUN 10 Pop’s – Sauget, IL
JUN 11 The Warehouse – Clarksville, TN
JUN 12 The Concourse – Knoxville,TN
JUN 14 Diamonds Pub & Billiards — Louisville, KY
JUN 15 Emerson Theatre – Indianapolis, IN (Sold Out)
JUN 16 Emerson Theatre – Indianapolis, IN
JUN 17 The Loft – Lansing, MI (Sold Out)
JUN 18 The Loft – Lansing, MI

Canadian Tour Dates:

JUN 24 Montebello, QC – Amnesia Rockfest
JUN 25 Boom Room – Windsor, ON
JUN 26 The Station Music Hall – Sarnia, ON
JUN 28 Music Hall – Oshawa, ON
JUN 29 Roxy Theatre – Barrie, ON
JUN 30 Opera House – Toronto, ON
JUl 01 Club NV – Brantford, ON
JUl 02 Guelph Concert Theatre- Guelph, ON
JUl 06 Pyramid Cabaret – Winnipeg, MB
JUl 08 Pump Roadhouse – Regina, SK
JUl 09 Union Hall – Edmonton, AB
JUl 10 TCU Place – Saskatoon, SK
JUl 11 Wild Bill – Red Deer, AB
JUl 12 Marquee Beer Market & Stage – Calgary, AB
JUl 14 Sapphire Club – Kelowna, BC
JUl 15 Venue Nightclub – Vancouver, BC
JUl 17 Distrikt Nightclub – Victoria, BC

Websites:

• insaneclownposse.com