SPOOKYtheFUNGI said

Thats soooo 90’s, its actually gonna be transgender

Or maybe a genderterrorist. Meet Dakota, the genderterrorist:

If u want a Joker’s Card that smells like cat pee & has declared a fatwa on sanity, them’s ur bitch.

86 said
As long as the next joker’s card actually feels like a jokers card, I’ll be satisfied. TMML albums…there was something off about them, they didn’t feel right. Perhaps it’s Mike E Clark’s absence on them? Yeah, I think we need Mike E Clark back.  

100% agree. For Mike E Clark, of course I’d love for him to do the full album but even if he’s just on board for a few songs or whatever, that’d be dope 

I’d personally like to see DJ Clay back in the mix from a mixing/mastering perspective. Of course I wanna see MEC all over the next jokers card though.

SPOOKYtheFUNGI said
imo if MEC came back, i think everyone saying they wish he was back will start bitching about him losing his touch. or find another way to dislike what icp puts out.

yall need to open your eyes to the fact that the albums you enjoyed alot are associated with good times of your life. most likely these good times were during the years of adolescence, before lifes bullshit, ie. bills, jobs and what not, slapped you in the face.

i personally embrace icps musical journey they take. its always something new and never the same shit every album. this is why most rappers dont last long, they try to copy their biggest hits and what not, just cuz it did well with listeners. i never understood why fans always want a rapper to go back and do exactly what they did on their 1st album. not one artist has EVER managed to replicate what they did on their “classic” album when the fans demanded it. ie. marshall mathers lp 2.

as we move through life we are always evolving and changing. so for example, if your favorite icp album was say… the amazing jeckel brothers… and say… it just released this year, instead on 1999, do you think it would be your favorite album still?  i highly doubt it. its more about that era and time of your life that made that album hold a more powerful meaning to you than music itself.

i feel like that as we get older, life gets tougher and stress is more common and we are afraid of change. when we were younger we embraced change and couldnt wait to see whats next.  i think that since we are more privy to negative emotions we find it hard to find something like an album from an artists we expect certain things from to be enjoyable or have a big impact on our lives.  

I agree with this mostly, but if ICP never released The Riddlebox at all, and then just BOOM! put it out as the next Joker’s Card, everyone would be stunned and say it was the best thing ever. Then again, maybe not… some asswipe may say “oh they’re just trying to duplicate The Mighty Death Pop!” Lol who knows

Interesting points about not associating good or bad times with album eras.

When The Wraith: Shangri-La came out, I was living in a one room apartment that I had to share a bathroom and kitchen with strangers, low lifes. Not in the cool Juggalo scrub way, either. I worked at a chicken shack washing dishes with other lowlifes. I made not even enough to pay the $200 rent. Killed 7 mice in one night, once. Could only get the evangelist station on my shitty tv, and for some reason it was crystal clear. Shit was awful. I was only like 17 years old. Pedophile on bottom floor. Anyway, despite beiNg in a particularly low period in my life, I still loved that album and do today. It actually helped me see a decent perspective in things. Even though the mice were literally chewing my hair at night (not the last time that happened, but the first to my knowledge), none of that wack stuff tarnished my musical enjoyment. So I feel ya there, Scroff. On the flipside, I am doing the best I’ve ever done in many ways and am a happy family man with tons of weed, but it didn’t increase my enjoyment of Lost very much. Found, I play though.

scruffy said

some would.  i wouldnt. 

unless i didnt like it.  in which case, i wouldnt need to look for reasons. 

yall need to open your eyes to the fact that the albums you enjoyed alot are associated with good times of your life. most likely these good times were during the years of adolescence, before lifes bullshit, ie. bills, jobs and what not, slapped you in the face.

this does not apply to me.  i enjoy music i like, current events are largely irrelevant. 

if anything, the reverse is true.  many of my favorite albums came out when life was shit.  and that makes em a lil extra memorable. 

i personally embrace icps musical journey they take.
…

so do i.  doesnt mean they are on time and on target with everything they do. 

as we move through life we are always evolving and changing. so for example, if your favorite icp album was say… the amazing jeckel brothers… and say… it just released this year, instead on 1999, do you think it would be your favorite album still?  i highly doubt it. its more about that era and time of your life that made that album hold a more powerful meaning to you than music itself. 

nah.  id be goin by bumpability. 

i feel like that as we get older, life gets tougher and stress is more common and we are afraid of change. when we were younger we embraced change and couldnt wait to see whats next.  i think that since we are more privy to negative emotions we find it hard to find something like an album from an artists we expect certain things from to be enjoyable or have a big impact on our lives.  

so, stop tryin to be an old person. 

me, im a toys r us kid.  fuck growin old gracefully.  make mama nature drag you. 

 

lost n found came out when, juggalo-wise, it was shiny diamonds, for me.  the era of the flh village n shit.  last two or three juggalo years [gathering to gathering] have probably been the best yet. 

no extra points for the albums, though.  zip.  

TheFvckinKreeper said
“yall need to open your eyes to the fact that the albums you enjoyed alot are associated with good times of your life. most likely these good times were during the years of adolescence, before lifes bullshit, ie. bills, jobs and what not, slapped you in the face.”

I think J said something similar in his audiobook, which brings this line of thought dangerously close to being recycled rhetoric. In either case, I disagree. I think this kind of reasoning devalues the listener’s opinion and sense of discriminating taste by generalizing the audience as whistfully nostalgic curmudgeons who can’t see past their lost teen years. It also conveniently shields the artist from criticism and accountability under the banner of “everything is somebody’s  good time party favorite!”

It’s true that music is highly subjective, and there’s nothing that clearly defines what makes it ‘good’. But there is structure and nuance that ties into the idea of a certain ‘sound’, and if that sound resonates with you then it just does. You come to prefer that sound. You may follow a band because you want more of that sound, but if you follow ICP with that mindset you will be sorely disappointed. I’m not knocking experimentation or evolution, both are good things I think. I just think it’s foolish and a little too easy to write off those who prefer that certain ‘ICP sound’ as stuck in the past because it ignores examination of the musical aspects that helped build this subculture, the bones of the music that make it objectively great.  

What you’re describing certainly is true a lot of the time, so it’s definitely a real thing. However, I still maintain that some of their new material, particularly MML, is quite inconsistent. To step back a little further, I’m a musician myself and pretty much all of my favorite bands have constantly evolved their sound throughout their career, tried new things, and overall no two of their albums really sound the same. So I have no problem going into a new album from any group with an open mind. Songs/albums are like time capsules for sure, both for the listener as well as where the artist was at the time. 

All that being said, I think there was a lot more originality and thought put into the entire process of making the first set of Joker cards as opposed to the 2nd set. With the exception of maybe COC, I can put any of those on and let it play without feeling the need to skip anything. They built the tracks around the song concepts to fit perfectly. Nowadays, they do it the other way around. Beats are made and then they write to them. Which, that is the way a lot of rappers and singers do it, but I’m pinpointing one of the reasons why maybe some of us don’t get the same vibe as we did from the first set. I’ve also said before that the characters in previous Joker cards actually felt like characters with a living, breathing presence. The new ones don’t feel as much like that, especially MML. And I have no problem with them doing the “softer” songs, but there’s a big difference between something like “Pass Me By” and “Ok”. “Juggalo Party” also should not be in existence. But I won’t go down that path. 

So again, I’m agreeing that what you’re describing plays a hand, but I truly think there are real factors at play as to why some of us can easily say the newer shit doesn’t quite have the same magic. With each new album they put out, I’m still going into it as I always have since ’98 and hope to love it. They have done some great stuff lately, such as “Lost At The Carnival” and “Phantom”, plus J & Shaggy seem to have no desire to slow down and I look forward to continuing to follow their evolution.