The Duke of the Wicked Violent J is featured inside 50th Anniversary of hip-hop New York Times editorial entitled “50 Stories 50 Rappers”! Awesomely enough, the Psychopathic Records emcee is featured  alongside Vanilla Ice, Eminem, Project Pat, Scarface, Kool Keith, Ice Cube, Krayzie Bone, Busta Ryhmes, Slug, Q-Tip, RZA, LL Cool J, Too Short and many more!

Below are some screenshots from the “50 Stories 50 Rappers” editorial with the full Violent J quote. The editorial is written by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli To read the entire editorial click here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/18/arts/music/hiphop50.html#violent-j

From Violent J via the New York Times:

“In the seventh grade, I met John Utsler, Shaggy’s older brother, and an original member of I.C.P. He showed me “Roxanne, Roxanne,” and all the battling they were doing. He put me up on Eazy-E. How was a seventh grader copping these vinyl records and where was he finding them at? There was no internet. It’s almost supernatural. Maybe he was listening to the Wizard on WJLB at night or something.”

“We would watch “Yo! MTV Raps” when it only came on for an hour. And we would also watch Channel 62, which is a local channel, and they had a show called “The New Dance Show” and they would spin local rappers’ videos. Really cheap-made local rapper videos, but they were our heroes: Awesome Dré, A.W.O.L., Detroit’s Most Wanted, Smiley, Prince Vince and the Hip Hop Force, Merciless Ameer, Kaos & Mystro, DJ Duncan Hines.”

“Awesome Dré’s “You Can’t Hold Me Back” album and “Straight Outta Compton,” they just lived in our CD player. It took our love of pro wrestling away, which had been our goal. But we couldn’t deny it no more, man. We wanted to do hip-hop. As far as flow, my three main guys were ICE CUBE, Awesome Dré and Esham. Now Eazy-E, I love Eazy-E’s voice, but Ice Cube on “Dope Man” is just a beast. He’s coming from the gut so hard.”

“Because people have called us horrorcore artists, I wanted to know about horror in hip-hop. My own personal investigation leads me to Houston, Texas, Prince Johnny C. That first GETO BOYS record was all normal except for this one song called “Assassins”: “My father was a priest, cold blooded he’s dead/Hypocrite, I caught him basin’, so I shot him in the head/Poured on the holy water, ‘Bless the dead’ is what I said/Then heard the demon screaming as his body bled.” Nobody was talking like that. What I do and what Esham did comes from Prince Johnny C’s original idea. I used to have cassette cases full of tapes of local rappers.. If I’d seen anything that was actually pressed up, I had to have it. So I walk into a store and there’s this guy Esham and he’s got an album out and two EPs. He’s rapping about the scariest [expletive] I’ve ever heard. He’s rapping about the devil, 666, crucifix. It was insane. And he sounds like the devil, his voice.He became our biggest influence. The sky would turn red when we’d play his CDs.”

“We looked at Detroit, we saw Kid Rock riding in a tractor in his video. He had Too Short producing tracks on there. He was touring with Ice Cube. He was rapping about being from 32 Mile Road, which is way the [expletive] out. It was unique, it was different. We’re like, wow, this kid’s way out, redneck-style, and he’s rapping. And then we’re looking at Esham coming out onstage in a coffin, rapping about the devil.

“So we were like, this is what Detroit does — theatrics. Plus we’re huge wrestling fans. We put face paint on after our first EP. The way Kiss does it in rock, in rap who’s doing that, you know? It felt natural. It wasn’t awkward. And we’ve been doing it ever since.”

“Right from the rip, we did everything ourselves. We pressed our CDs up, we advertised ourselves. And we hired Esham and Kid Rock, the two biggest rappers in Detroit, to be on our first CD. We had Michigan on lock. And Toledo and parts of Ohio. I’m talking 3,000 people at a show. We couldn’t do [expletive] in Pittsburgh if we went there, though.”

“I remember in ’95, Onyx and Das EFX were going on tour. We got on that tour somehow. We got booed off every night, sometimes violently. It was probably 400 people at every show that we went to. We got to Michigan, 2,200 people packed, sold out. Onyx came to us and was like … We went out last. It was three shows we did like that — Detroit, Flint and Toledo.”

“That was our first tour. After ’95 we toured nonstop, but our experiences with touring with other rap groups are very minimal. For multiple reasons, but the Faygo is a main one. If they have their equipment up there, it’s gonna be all wet. Like, we’ve played with Snoop Dogg, but he’s had to go on first, which sucked, because people leave. But he ain’t gonna go on after we destroyed the stage with the Faygo.”

“In ’94, we got asked to be part of this big rap show in Toledo. It was Outkast, Coolio, a bunch more. We were so honored to be on a lineup like that. So we do the show and afterward the Outkast guys surround us and they’re like, you got your [expletive] soda all over our [expletive]. So we had to pay ’em money for cleaning and everything. People were mad at us and we weren’t trying to get nobody mad at us. We just wanted to do our thing.”

“You know, there’s a lot of reasons why we’re in this place we’re in. It’s a benefit because the Juggalos are the [expletive] and very supportive. But people look at Juggalos like they’re not people. They say, the only ones that like your [expletive] are the Juggalos. What are Juggalos? They’re people!”

“I would love the opportunity to get out on one of these hip-hop tours and perform for an audience that ain’t ours so people might say, man, they’re actually pretty good. One time we offered ICE CUBE $100,000 to spit a verse and he passed, and then years later he did it for free, out of respect. Ain’t that crazy?”

Websites:

• Psychopathic Vault