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Alone with Violent J - Part 1
A Real, One on One Interview!
Insane Clown Posse is truly, without a doubt, the most hated, and criticized main stream band there is. Most of the world first heard of ICP when they got dumped off of the Disney owned label Hollywood Records because of the extreme lyrical content. The press then wrote ICP off as a joke and said "They'll never be heard of again after the Disney hype is over". At the time Rolling Stone, Spin, Vibe and almost every other major music mag reviewed and slammed ICP's Great Milenko album and swore that ICP were a joke. They all commented on how bad Island's choice was to sign ICP to a multi-million dollar record deal. Many called Islands decision "The Blunder of the year" and Island was considered the laughing stock of the music industry.
Since then, The music mags have never written any other articles on ICP, You have never seen an ICP video on MTV, not once, never. The only press ICP ever gets now a days is when they get arrested or something crazy happens to them.
A Year and half goes by. The hype is long over. ICP's name is long forgotten by the main stream world. Are they working odd jobs now? Are they crack heads now? FUCK NO! THEY'RE STILL HERE!! Bigger than ever! They're platinum, bitch! Almost 1,000,000 sales and counting. To this very day ICP sound Scans 10,000 copies each and every fuckin' week. Check the BillBoard charts motherfuckers!!! They've out sold major bands that have been embraced and jocked by the media. Bands that everyone loves like The Def Tones, Limp Biskit and Coal Chamber all have failed to match the selling power of ICP!!! ICP has out sold all them well-loved bands without the help of nobody. No Radio, no press, no MTV, no nothing.
Why does ICP continue to sell so many records 18 months after all that Disney shit is long over with and forgotten? One reason... Cause they’re the shit. Rolling Stone, Spin and Vibe might have thought they sucked, the world may have doubted them, but 1,000,000 Juggalos tend to differ. Fuck the world!
Because ever major mag and video station refuses to come back out and say, "OK we were wrong, maybe ICP does got something to them" even after a million sales, we knew the demand was out there. So we conducted an interview with ICP's Violent J that’s so big, that it's as big as the 50 interviews he should have gotten by now. And what better place for this big ass interview with Violent J than the ICP website. That way for all the ICP fans out there, if you want it... you got it. But this is no ordinary interview. We ask Violent J everything from what's his favorite kung fu movie? To doggy style or missionary?
I Sat down in a small room at the offices of Psychopathic Records. Violent J was a half a day late. Everyone at Psychopathic seemed like they didn’t care less that he was on his way. They were all eating Pizza and making fun of each other. Nobody was working. Then a car pulled up. It was a black Yukon truck. Billy Bill was driving. 4 Ninjas got out but only Billy Bill and J came in. The other two ninjas sat by the truck and smoked cigarettes. It was just Violent J, his friend Billy Bill and myself. I knew what I had to do. I didn’t want this to be just another interview, I Knew that I wanted to know it all. Juggalos want to know everything about this ninja, so I dug as far as I could into his demented thoughts. He was very loud. At times I thought he was going to kill me. He was big and scary. He was wearing a gold and blue wrestling mask and drinking a bottle of water. I've met him before a million times but he never remembers anybody. I Pressed record on my trusty tape recorder and then I commenced to unlock millions of the secrets of ICP. There are 4 parts to my long ass interview. You get one part each week for a month starting Nov. 19th, 1998. Here they are... Get ready!
Jelly Nuts: First and Foremost... Be very specific about when, where and why please.. What is your real life story?
Violent J: I Was born back when I was a baby. I lived in Berkley, Michigan somewhere with my mom and my real dad. My real dad was a punk bitch and he left us hangin' when I was like 2. Then my mom moved into a different house on the other side of Berkley. My mom re-married to this other dick head, bitch a few years later. He was a big time dick though. He really fucked my mom and my family up bad. Really, really bad. I guess I was too young to remember most of that shit, but from what I do remember he had to be the devil himself. I could disappear from this whole rap game at any second and be serving a life sentence, cause me and my brother Rob (Jump Steady) will kill him if we ever happen to bump into him some day. My mom divorced his old bitch ass and we moved to a cheaper flat a few miles away still in Berkley. I lived there till I was like 10 or something. That house was haunted, but we was down with all the ghosts. They used to fuck with the dickheads that lived under us, but we was the ghost's homies. They knew my mom was going through some shit at the time and she didn't need some fuckin' ghost to stress over too. But back to my second dad, If there's a hell, that mother fucker has a first class reserved spot in the anus of hell, dog.
Jelly Nuts: You were down with the ghost? What the hell are you talking about?
Violent J: The house we lived in was haunted. Me and my brother would watch shit slide across the floor by it's self. At first it scared the shit out of us. One time I opened our bedroom door and there was a mop standing straight up in front of me. It was just chilling there. It was standing straight up. I pissed my underoos looking at that shit. I screamed for my mom. Everybody watched it. Then it just fell over when my mom reached for it. Anyhow, some time after that, me and Rob sat down on the living room floor when it was dark and no one else was home and we said to the ghost "Come on ninjas, don't scare us. We just live here with our mom. It ain't our fault we're here" Then we told them all the shit my mom was going through and we said "Look, we'll do what ever you want so that we don't disrespect your house. But just be down with us instead of against us". And then it was on. from that day on they were our homies. They would scare our friends that we would have spend the night but not us. One time, one of my sister's friends was spending the night and she was taking a leak or whatever in the bathroom. The ghost cut the lights off and broke this little glass duck thing against a wall. She was shook as hell. My guess was she was doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing in there. Maybe stealing some shit from us or something, and the ghost got pissed. They were the shit, they would cut the lights on for us when we came home and off when we left. I loved them.
Jelly Nuts: How was your childhood? Did you have a rough time growing up?
Violent J: My childhood was probably the freshest on the fuckin' planet. I wouldn't change one thing except for what my mom went through with her husbands. But as for me, hell naaaw, my shit was the bomb. Every last bit of being a kid was the shit. My childhood was without a doubt the greatest time of my life. I Remember we were always mad fuckin' poor.. My mom was a janitor at a big ass church for something like 5 years. We were always on welfare and shit. Foodstamps for days. Block Cheese and powered milk. My mom would mix that shit with real milk to try and dilute it, but that shit always tasted like Milk flavored Kool Aid. But we never lived in a ghetto. We always lived in a regular blue-collar area. I Remember kids used to make fun of us because of my mom's car when she would drop us off at school. My mom always had a bucket. Some of our own fuckin' dick head friends would actually ask our mom to drop them off a few blocks before we got to the school so they wouldn't be seen with us. But me and my brother loved it. We gave no fucks. I ain't just saying that, we really didn't care. We didn't give a fuck. It was our style. We were then and still are The Mighty Bruce Brothers. Our own friends were embarrassed to ride in our mom's car but I thought it was the shit! Besides, where was there fuckin' moms to drive us? Probably at home suckin' on the mailman's nizzo's. My mom was the shit and always will be. That's why my mom now drives a pimped out, fat ass, Durango, 4-wheel truck with black leather interior byatch. Who's laughin' now? (looking at his friend Billy Bill and laughing, Billy replies "Hell yeah"). Anyhow, I Loved the fact that me and my brother were the notorious nerdy Bruce Brothers. We were known for being super poor and super scrubby. The girls in school would play games and say if you step on a blue tile in the hall you have to kiss one of the Bruce brothers and then everyone would go "eeeewwwwww"". Yeah, but 15 years later them same bitches are lining up to blow us in the back of the tour bus. Ha ha ha.. (Laughing with his friend Billy Bill again)
Jelly Nuts: Go on with your life story...
Violent J: I am bitch... I was the shit. I wore the same pair of sweat paints all year long. I remember in grade school in Berkley, the school would serve a hot lunch at lunchtime. It cost $1.10. My mom never had the loot to give us, so they would let you borrow it at school from the office. You had three days to pay it back, after that they would announce your name and say that you owed the office money over the morning PA announcements. It was always the same fuckin' names all year long, every year. "Rob and Joe Bruce" . I Loved that shit. All the kids in class would turn around and look at you. I was always happier to be the kid getting looked at, instead of one of the dick heads doing the starring. I gave a fuck less. I loved it.
I remember I shit my paints in the 3rd grade. I know that's way to old to still be shittin' your paints, but I had to do it. I couldn't hold it. I took my underwear off in the school bathroom and cleaned my ass. I was trying to be fast as hell so know one would catch me. I accidentally left my underwear in the stall and jetted out back to class. My mom had my name written on the stitch so she could tell mine and my brother's apart. I got busted. Mad kids found it. They even had it on a stick and chased me through the hall. I was dissed hard for that shit for years. I fuckin' loved it. I wish I still had them drawers. My childhood was the bomb diggity.
Jelly Nuts: Ah.. Ok...?
Violent J: (Sipping his water) I'm so happy that we was poor because that helps me appreciate everything I got now! What if you were raised in a nice fat house with mad loot? Think of how much more it would take to make you happy today? $50 bucks makes me nut my pants, cause I started with zero! If you were born already a success, then all life would be is trying to keep it all. No goals, no dreams, no nothing except trying to stay where you're already at... wow, that sounds like fun. And what if you failed? What if you couldn't maintain your rich life style? You wouldn't know what the fuck to do! Being poor would probably make you kill yourself cause you wouldn't know how to handle it! Being born poor is way better. It's way more fun to dream about getting paid and then actually doing it one day. The reward is way, way bigger to you if you make it! Also if you lose it all.. what's the worst that could happen? You would be poor again, and that ain't nothing new. Fuck richies. They don't know shit about life.
Jelly Nuts: Aren't you a richy now? You gotta have money I'm sure
Violent J: Yup. I'm fat paid but hey, like my brother always says... "There's a big difference between being a millionaire and having a million dollars"... A Millionaire has it in his blood and his mind. He is his money. He's a millionaire! He was probably born with it or something and he needs it to survive. But if you take an average scrub like me and give him a million bucks, he can still be real, he can keep his same clear head and have fun with his loot. Cause the money ain't in his heart it's just in his hands. He doesn't depend on it to make him happy. Besides.. fuck you. I'm broke now again anyway. I bought my mom a house, me a house and all my homies got cars. I'm Broke again. So bottom line is this... I might of had a million bucks.. But I was never no fuckin' millionaire, and I never will be. No matter how many millions I get.
Jelly Nuts: Finish about when you were growing up now...
Violent J: (Sipping his water and slightly choking on it) Me and my brother, fuck! (Choke) Me and my brother Rob were and are super fresh. We always stayed away from drinking and dope and shit. We never drank or smoked or nothing. I'm not against that shit at all, you can blow crack smoke in my face and I wouldn't give a half a fuck. We just never got into it ourselves. Never had an urge to. Why start now? What if I liked it and kept at it until I turned into a base head or something? Then I'd have to steel them shoes your wearing.
Jelly Nuts: OK, moving right along..
Violent J: At 12 or whatever, my mom remarried to this other ninja and we moved to Oak Park, Michigan. Oak Park is cool cause it's really a mixed neighborhood. Mad different races of people all in one neighborhood. Lots of everybody there. Mad fuckin' boring though. Don't move there, you'll end up squeezing your own neck in boredom. I went to 7th and 8th grade at Best Jr. High in Oak Park. That's where I first met Shaggy. His older brother John went to school with me. Me and John were homies. We hung like nuts in a sac. Shaggy was 2 years younger than us but Shaggy was like a third nut in the sac. We were a rap crew together called the JJ Boys for a second there cause all of our names started with J. I Was called Jagged Joe and Shaggy was called Kangol Joe cause he had a Kangol hat. It was fresh. We used to battle this other rap crew called the Wrecking Crew (No relation to the World Class Wrecking Crew). They were from this fucked up, ghetto ass neighborhood called theTownship between Oak Park and Ferndale. They were the shit, but they didn't have any shit on tape. They would just freestyle battle us at school. We had something on cassette though. We met this ninja named "Scratch Master T" from Hazel Park, Mi. He recorded a tape of us rapping with his shifty equipment in his house. He always smoked banana peels. I know that sounds crazy but fuck you.. he did. You can ask him why he smoked banana peels, cause I don't know why. Anyhow, our little song was the shizznif. I wish I still had it. The song was called 'The Party At The Top Of The Hill". At the time, Run DMC always talked about Adidas and The Beastie Boys would mention White Castle Hamburgers in their songs. So we started mentioning Faygo cause we always had some and it was our own little trademark for our crew. This was the opening line to the song... "We're the JJ Boys on the microphone stand, and we're kickin' it live with a Faygo in our hand" I Still remember that shit.
Jelly Nuts: Is that how the Faygo came about?
Violent J: I Don't know mother fucker. Who the fuck cares. The Faygo was always there. Everybody always ask me that. We just drink allot of it cause its mad cheap and they got hundreds of crazy ass flavors. Fuck that question. We used to do graffiti on walls and we were called 'The Krylon Boys", that was our graffiti crew's name. My tag name was Faygo Joe cause I always drank that shit. We sucked though. Shaggy was the only one that could actually draw. Me and John sucked but we tried. We would all start off on a wall together and fifteen minutes later, me and John would be sitting on the curb watching for cars while Shaggy finished. Cause we sucked.
Jelly Nuts: Obviously you never stuck with the JJ Boys...
Violent J: Naaa, we were more into bullshit. When my brother went into the Army, life got whack. We turned into thugs. We would steal hundreds of hood emblems off cars and wear that shit everywhere. We always tried to sell them at flea markets but I don't think we ever sold one. We thought we were gangsters but we were just kids trying to look like Run DMC. This kid checked Shaggy's Kangol at school. I Thought Shaggy was going to cry, but he never did. Instead, I did for some reason. (More laughing with his friend Billy Bill).
Jelly Nuts: Kangol hats, hell yeah, I remember them things...
Violent J: So what, who cares what you remember? This is about me bitch. Where was I? When I was 14 or something my mom moved again, this time from Oak Park, MI to Ferndale MI, the next city over.. I Started going to 9th grade at Ferndale High, but I dropped out half way threw it. Shaggy did the same thing. We both quit school. I Started trying to go again, the next year at Hazel Park high, but fuck that. That only lasted a month. That shit sucked. To this day I'm like fuck school. I don't recommend that shit to anybody.
Jelly Nuts: Ok... So what did you then do with that impressive 9th grade education?
Violent J: Well basically I just worked hundreds of whack ass jobs. Dishes, stock, grill, millions of jobs. I Even fuckin' dressed up as a pizza slice and waved at cars driving by. I was trying to get them to come into this new pizza place. They paid me $10 bucks a day. Kids would drive by and throw shit at me, and I would be standing there talking shit and flippin' them off in a pizza slice suit. I was like "Come on bitch! What! Where you at! Bring that shit! Come on!" Pepperonis hangin off me and shit. That was the bomb. Shaggy had the same job. He worked every other day as me. That's cause they only had one pizza suit. Shaggy's mom knew the guy that gave us the job. We both got fired though. I worked mad jobs but all I really cared about was hanging out at wrestling shows downtown. We wanted to be wrestlers more than anything in the world. So anyway, me, John and Shaggy all hung out in Downtown Detroit. We always were at every festival at Heart Plaza, Mexican, African, Ho down, Grand Prix, Polish, The Fireworks, whatever. Downtown was just one 15 minute, $1.00 bus ride straight down Woodward. What ever was going on, we was there. And you can bet your ass that we was always at every wrestling show. We knew how to sneak into every building that had wrestling. I even worked at Joe Louis and Cobo as an usher for a month or two, but I got fired cause I stole a big ass box of nacho chips and got caught. We was starving.
Jelly Nuts: Ok.. and then..
Violent J: Hey bitch... you said you wanted every last detail, that's what you gettin'. So.. while we were hanging out behind Cobo and Joe Louis Arena's wrestling shows every month looking for autographs we met a lot of ninjas just like us. That's how we met Rudy (The Rude Boy). Rudy lived on the southwest side of Detroit. Hanging out with him we met people and saw things that would change our lives forever.
Southwest was home to me in many ways. Everyone was on some whole other shit. Everyone in southwest never cared about what kind of car your fuckin' mom drove. It seemed like everyone was on Foodstamps. You never had to hide them and get all embarrassed to spend them. Southwest has the biggest mix of people in the world. How much money your mom had was never the issue there because everyone was all in the same boat. In the burbs you got richies, poor kids, everyone, but in the city it seems like everybody's all the same... broke, but there all over it. It's not an issue. We hung out in southwest forever.
Jelly Nuts: So Rude Boy has been there from the start?
Violent J: Yup. That's right ninja. When I was 15 or 16, I moved in with Rudy's family for a while and we both worked odd jobs all over the place. Macdonald's, Wendy's, washing dishes, who ever the fuck would hire us. About a year later, Me, Shaggy, and John started rapping again but just fucking around on paper. Our dream was still to be wrestlers. Gang shit was what everyone was into in Southwest, so we started our own gang called ICP, Inner City Posse. That started this crazy ass violent faze that we all went threw. We sucked as an organized gang, we were more like a posse of homies that were just thuggin'. We used to stomp the shit out of kids all day. My foot has penetrated many an ass, I'll tell ya. I Don't know what the hell we was thinking, but we used to stomp somebody down at least once every day it seemed like. We got stomped down allot to, I can't front. There was only like 10 of us in our gang, sometimes less and sometimes more. We used to mostly hang out in and around southwest, but we would always mob out to River Rough, Ecorse, Inkster, and Dearborn, mostly downriver. My sister moved info a fucked up apartment in Taylor, and so we hung out there alot to. I mostly lived back and forth from Detroit to Taylor, to Ferndale back to Detroit. I was a straight up thug. We stole tons of car stereos from everywhere and we would sell them to our homies. In between stealing car stereos and sometimes even cars, we would work more fucked up jobs. We stole a car one time that said blue eyes on the front license plate. We gripped it to a Radio Shack to get something and when we came back out the police were already at the car. That shit was close... hey, keep that shit on the down low though. If fact don't even print that shit. Just edit that whole part out.
Jelly Nuts: Don't worry homey, I got you covered. Continue on...
Violent J: Shaggy and his brother John were the masters of stealing. They would steal expensive books, jackets, CD's and shit and then take them back to a different store for the loot. Anything. Food, toothpaste, fuckin' Ironing boards, fuckin Chia pets, what ever the fuck they wanted. They would just walk right out with that shit like nothing. I can't front, I was always to scared to do that shit. I never stole nothing from stores. Only parked cars at night or whatever. I would've even go in the stores with them. I'd just wait in the car and listen to Awesome Dre tapes. (If you don't know who that is, you better do your Detroit rap homework)
Jelly Nuts: Have you ever been in Jail?
Violent J: Nope, never.
Jelly Nuts: Really... or are you kidding.
Violent J: Your a fuckin' anus. I Been in and out of jail a million times. I never did a long stretch though. Just a few days here, a few weeks there. I'm a good kid ya know?
Jelly Nuts: What about your first time in jail, what was it for?
Violent J: (Drinking his water and spitting if out on the carpet) I was working at this car wash when this kid named Paul that I used to go to school with in the 6th grade came threw the car wash. He recognized me and we started talking. He said that he lived out in this city called Milford now and they were having this big ass party. That night me, Shaggy, Rudy and my other homey Nate all went to the party out in Milford. Boom! There was mad bitches everywhere. I Met this bitch and fucked her that night. I Think I tell in love with her right then cause skins back then was a very rare thing for my scrubby ass.
After that we rode back out to Milford like 100 times. About a month later the bitch cheated on me and then told me about it over the phone. So I called her back later and told her I was going to kill her and her family. You know, the manly thing to do right? Well she got scared and thought I was really going to. She knew we was gang thugs, plus we used to play it up extra hard around her like we was some real ass mobsters or something. Her mom called the police and I had a warrant for malicious threatening phone calls. About a month later we got pulled over in Hazel Park and my warrant landed me in the clink. I Finally got bailed out for $100 bucks 3 days later. That was my first time. I wasn't even really going to do it! I might have killed her maybe, but I wouldn't of done the family! Ya know? So then they put me on this probation that said I cant go near that bitch and I was supposed to stay out of Milford city limits. My homey Paul still lived out there so I went out there to hang with him alot. Well get this, next thing you know Paul is going out with the bitch that put me in jail! We rode out there and beat his ass right in his school. We mobbed right into his class room. I did a total of 2 months in the Oakland County Jail for that shit. I Was in jail over Christmas and New years and all that shit. I was such a sap ass bitch. All that over some dumb fuckin' bitch. I was 17 and dumb as hell.
After that I was like fuck Milford and them richy burbs all along. I Never even left the city after that shit.
Jelly Nuts: So Did you ever get to become a wrestler?
Violent J: Yes. I can do anything I want to. I sooner or later accomplish all my fuckin' dreams cause I ain't no sap no more. I kind of had to sneak my way in to wrestling though. I started wrestling on some independent shows around Detroit when I was 18, but I sucked at it. I had to lie and tell them that I was trained at a wrestling school down in Texas so they would let me wrestle but really I trained my damn self. Me and Shaggy and his brother were some back yard wrestling ninja as. We mastered the whole sport. I Used to practice on this bitch I was going out with. I Fucked her up bad a few times. She was crazy as hell, we was fighting and she stabbed me once, I knocked her out. We was fuckin again that night though. My first match was at Azteca Hall in Southwest Detroit against a ninja named Irish Mickey Doyle. My wrestling name at the time was Corporal Daniels. I wore army shit to the ring cause my brother would always send me that shit to me for free. He was still in the Army and Army boots were easier to find that wrestling boots. So I was an Army, wrestler, ninja guy. I was whack as fuck but at least I was doing it. I thought I was the shit. I Wrestled Al Snow on a show once and the news paper gave it a 4 star match. I still have the clipping. Now Al Snow is a big WWF star and shit. That's the bomb.
Jelly Nuts: So when did your rapping take off?
Violent J: Just like wrestling, when ever I really got info something big, I wanted to do if myself. NWA and Easy E continued to grow on me and then when Awesome Dre came out... BOOM! I was hooked. Here was a guy from Detroit schooling the nation with gangsta shit. Next thing you know, I was a gangsta rapper. Southwest was my Compton. I made a song called "Southwest Song" (Remade on 1993's Ringmaster Album) on a cheap ass radio and gave it away to all of our homies and all of there homies. Everyone seemed like they loved it. At St. Ann's Church on Vernor, they would have a festival once a year, I gave away about 100 dubbed copies of that song that year. Everyone told me it was the shit. I was mad geeked. I thought I was Sir J-A-Lot or something.
After that, I made a whole album on a Karaoke machine with this kid named D-Lyrical. My boys introduced me to him. We did an album together called "Intelligence and violence". He was the intelligent guy and I was the Violent guy. His mom always yelled at me and hated me cause I cussed so much and she said I rapped so loud you could hear me from outside. I never even really knew this kid, I lust used him for his Karaoke machine. Then my crazy bitch bought me my own Karaoke machine. It cost her $125 bucks. Then I had my own. That was the last time D-Lyrical's wack ass ever saw me. It was just violence from then on. Fuck the intelligent shit, he sucked anyway. Fuck him and his mom. I should drive by there with a megaphone and bust my dirty raps in his driveway. Fuckin' I should go back over there and set up some speakers stacks on his lawn and cuss my fuckin' ass oft.
Ok, let me relax myself... so Shaggy and his brother John re-joined my new rap crew and we ran shit on the world of Karaoke rapping over other peoples instrumentals.
Jelly Nuts: So that's how ICP was born?
Violent J: ICP was born when we started our gang, bitch. I told you already. Even though sucked as a gang. We were more like a click of homies trying to be a gang. We spray painted that shit everywhere so people would think there was 100's of us. We never sold dope or sold guns or anything. Maybe we sold a little bit of weed but that's it. We were just street bums that loved each other like family. That's what we are to this day. My whole road crew today is made up of most of the same ninjas that we used to ride with back then. Rude Boy, Jump Steady, Nate The Mac, Billy Bill, Chucky, Stephan and all them ninjas.
ICP as rappers really first took off when we made this fresh Karaoke album called "Basement Cuts". It was the shit. We started selling them everywhere. Detroit, Ferndale, Taylor, Oak Park, especially down river. Everywhere. We sold it for $2 bucks a tape. We sold mad copies of it in the city. Probably something like 200 copies total. People would ride there bikes up to our porch in Southwest and by them oft us all the time. Ninjas we didn't even know would ride up and ask us for a copy. It was the shit. My brother was still in the Army at the time. He was in the dessert Storm War. I sent him mad copies too. He and his homies were felling us that we were the shit and we should go to a real studio and hook if up. He sent us some money to help. He also told us that his homey from Oak Park owned a record store with his brother in Roseville MI, and we should take some copies up to him and see it he'll sell it at his store. So we did. That's when we met Alex Abbiss. He was the ninja my brother knew. Alex was the freshest mother fucker we ever met. He would fell them kids at his store what ever they wanted to hear just to get them to buy it. Me and Shaggy would hide in the back room and listen to him sell our tapes. He sold alot of copies of Basement Cuts, we couldn't dub them off fast enough.
After Alex sold a bunch of copies of our basement tape at the store, he asked us if we wanted a manager... We needed him more than a sac needs nuts in if. We said "yezzzzzes byyafch". Alex told us that the only way we'd ever make it is to do it our damn selves. Fuck sending demos to record labels, we just have to create our own label. Then we'd sell enough records ourselves on our own label, to prove to the big labels that were the shit. Then they'll come to us! So right then and there we created Psychopathic Records. If was Just me, Alex, Shaggy and his brother John. Shaggy grabbed a piece of paper and drew the hatchet man right then and there in Alex's basement and the rest is history.
Jelly Nuts: Tell me that history, continue ninja...
Violent J: What the fuck, ninjas can read Forgotten Freshness credits and here this shit. We went info a studio and recorded our first professional tape. It was a four song maxi single called "Dog Beats". We went under our gang's name Inner City Posse. We had alot to learn about running our own label and putting shit out ourselves. We didn't know shit. Nothing. There was this rapper starting to get mad big in Detroit named Esham. Esham and his brother were selling mad records on his own lable called "Reel Life Productions". They were on top it seemed, so we watched how they did it. They were every bit our roll models. They were the shit. They had the whole city locked down. Esham did these satanic style raps and he had every one scarred. Every record store swung oft his nuts. We wanted Psychopathic Records to be just like Reel Life but better. In the beginning, what ever they did, we did. When I look back at that shit now I wanna kick myself. We should have picked an Ice Cube or somebody to follow instead of a big local guy. Cause we spent years frying to be the biggest in Detroit instead of the biggest in the world. That was a mistake that we went on to make for something like 4 more years.
Jelly Nuts: What kid of reaction did Dog Beats get?
Violent J: A shifty one. we pressed 500 copies on cassette our first run. It took us forever to sell them. Life started to change for us all drastically. It started to become our goal to make if. We all had jobs now and hustles on the side and all of our money went into Psychopathic Records. I Made my crazy bitch poor every dime she had into us. I Moved to the east side of Detroit for a minute, with this kid named Eric (Greeze E). Ninjas in southwest were starting to player hate us cause we were starting to make some noise. They broke out our windows and shit twice. If seemed like everybody in the city was against us at the time, but years later we found out if was just one crew of weak bitches, but that's a whole other story. I was working at St. Andrews Hall downtown as a security guy, I Think that's how we met Eric. I watch shifty. band after shifty band come play there every fuckin night. Every band that came to Detroit all had one thing in common, they all sucked. The hardest thing about that job was watching all them shifty ass bands.
Jelly Nuts: After Dog Beats what happened next?
Violent J: We had just started to record Gangsta Codes which was going to be the follow up album to the Dog Beats single tape when everything in my life 360o. Just right at that point, the Dark Carnival came into our world and life was never the same again after that. We went back info the studio and canned that gangsta codes shit. The new album will now be called 'The Carnival Of Carnage" and if will be the 1sf in a series of 6 Joker's Cards. Ninjas all around us thought we were stupid as hell. We put down the guns and picked up our axes as tar as the gangsta shit goes. I Didn't give a fuck about anything else again except the Dark Carnival. It's the same today. People all around us laughed and criticized everything we did. After we recorded halt of Carnival Of Carnage, Shaggy's brother John quit the group and left us dry. The dues was just to much for him to pay, and to this day he'll admit that. We were fucked. We were mad broke, we needed his money plus ours to press the record. Plus with him gone it was mad wack cause now we got half an album with this ninja rapping on it and he ain't even in the group no more. Greeze E took his place for about a month but that shit was short lived too. Shaggy was working at this Coney island and I was working midnights at this wack ass gas station and Alex was still at the store. The Dark Carnival was behind us in spirit but they didn't help pay shit! (Laughing hysterically with Billy Bill) With John gone, it would of seemed frantic but looking at two things we pulled threw it. No.1 everything happens for a reason. No 2. He kind of sucked a little bit anyway. He says he didn't get this whole carnival shit and he thought what we was doing was wack. So, Alex, me and Shaggy were alone facing the world with an entire album full of crazy psychotic clown rap. We saved and saved and we finally did it. Carnival Of Carnage was ready to hit the streets and the mighty count down was set to begin.
Jelly Nuts: So Carnival Of Carnage came out and the count down was on?
Violent J: Yep. The sky was red that day. I Mean that. Anybody who remembers that day will fell you, the sky was red. Blood red. It was an eerie day. Very eerie. The First Jokers card was out and the Carnival was on it's way. Esham and his brother had some new competition on the block. Psychopathic records had begun it's mission. We even saved our dollars for months during the recording of Carnival Of Carnage and paid Esham and Detroit's other star at the time, Kid Rock, to do songs with us on it. We knew that they would help us get our album into way more record stores than Dog Beats got into. But even with Detroit's 2 biggest rap stars making guest appearances on the album, still it seemed like nobody really wanted it. Maybe a few stores but that was it. But none the less if was out and if was on.
No matter how hard the times got I felt so good. All my life I never had shit to do. I never gave a fuck about life cause it just seemed like everybody just loved to always dog Joe Bruce. But now I was with my long time homey Shaggy and we felt this calling. Something was calling us. Us! Scrubby ass Joe Bruce and qui ass Shaggy were the ones chosen to spread this powerful message. We were the men for the job. But fuck all that shit, just with all that inside, rapping was the only thing we were good at. The whole game of making it seemed like most people could never fake it. Most people would quit. But hard times were something that we were used to. We could handle this. And here was this other ninja that was willing to take the whole journey with us. Alex believed in us. Why? How? Fuck it. Who cares. All signs pointed up so me and Shaggy weren't passing shit bye. Fuck that, we jumped on the wagons and were gone forever. |
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