Superlatives flow like Faygo soft drinks in Steve Miller’s Juggalo, which examines Detroit’s Insane Clown Posse and their rabid fan base, the Juggalos. Crowned early on as “the most hated band in the world,” ICP quickly earned the scorn of everybody from music critics to the FBI, going so far as to sue the agency after they classified the Juggalos as a gang in 2011. Miller chronicles it all with the earnestness of an aging professor desperate to convince his students that he’s hip to the times, championing Juggalos as “the last American subculture” while taking potshots at the dimwitted cops who harassed fans. This raging against the machine quickly grows exhausting, as does the laundry list of legal developments and personal injustices faced by the Juggalos, seldom listed chronologically. Yet when Miller focuses on ICP – two broke white boys from Detroit who trumped adversity as platinum rappers in classic rags-to-riches fashion – the story sells itself.

Juggalo: Insane Clown Posse and the World They Made

by Steve Miller
Da Capo Press, 336 pp., $17.99 (paper)

This article appears in December 9 • 2016.

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