FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. — For more than 20 years, the rap duo Insane Clown Posse has courted controversy by rhyming about depravity, brutality and insanity. Now it causes trouble by making fun of Miley Cyrus.
A few days ago, Insane Clown Posse, a pioneering act in a rap genre called horrorcore, was approached by Fuse, the music-oriented cable channel, to record its commentary for a roundup of supposedly shocking music videos. Though the rappers have enjoyed their increasing visibility on Fuse (where a second season of their television series “Insane Clown Posse Theater,” will debut on Wednesday), they were dismayed to find that those videos included nonthreatening artists like Robin Thicke and Adam Levine.
“How are we going to sit there and talk about how shocking Maroon 5 is?” asked Joseph Utsler, an Insane Clown Posse co-founder who goes by the stage name Shaggy 2 Dope.
His musical partner, Joseph Bruce, known as Violent J, added: “We had to do it I.C.P.-style or it would have looked bad for us.”
The band’s solution was to mock the performers that Fuse had asked them to discuss. (“Justin Bieber started off as a teeny-bop child artist,” explained Violent J. “Now he’s a teeny-bop child artist with tattoos. Shocking!”) But even as performers who wear the face paint of grinning harlequins and burnish their outsider status, the duo understand that something looks very strange about this arrangement.
The past year has been particularly trying for Insane Clown Posse, which, with an attitude that mixes silliness and over-the-top aggression, has built a worshipful cadre of fans, known as Juggalos.
On one front, the band is waging a legal battle against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose National Gang Intelligence Center listed Juggalos as “a loosely organized hybrid gang” in a 2011 report. On another, the band is pushing back against a former publicist who is suing Insane Clown Posse for sexual harassment. Add these challenges to the group’s continuing struggle to preserve its underground reputation while pursuing mainstream acceptance, and you have the makings of a full-blown existential crisis.
Lately, Violent J said, he has been seeing a psychiatrist and taking medication to help him cope with the persistent feeling that he can never turn off the pressures of work.
“I want to come home, be with my kids, just kick back and watch TV,” he said. “And I can’t do it unless I take some sort of sedative to slow me down.”
“If you’re not banging the drums, making noise in this industry, nobody’s looking at you,” he added. “Nobody’s listening.”
On a chilly autumn morning, Violent J, 41, and Shaggy 2 Dope, 39, were holding court at the offices of their label, Psychopathic Records, in a modest building here, about 20 miles northwest of Detroit, that is part warehouse, part frat house. They are plain-spoken but always conscious of how their choices will affect perceptions; they seek opportunities that will portray them in the right light, but understand that, in a social-media era, they cannot afford to pass up any exposure.
Indeed, 1990s-era Insane Clown Posse albums like “The Great Milenko” and “The Amazing Jeckel Brothers” both went platinum. By comparison, “The Mighty Death Pop!,” a 2012 release that included songs like “Night of the Chainsaw” and “Hate Her to Death,” has sold just 94,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
And though Insane Clown Posse has been satirized on “Saturday Night Live” and throughout popular culture, it knows that this recognition does not translate into artistic credibility or record sales. “None of that registered,” Violent J said, when “The Mighty Death Pop!” came out.
Still, other independent musicians and labels want to see Insane Clown Posse succeed, because the group represents an important bellwether of their industry.
What the band faces now is “a hell of a challenge,” said Travis O’Guin, the president and chief executive of Strange Music, a hip-hop label in Missouri.
“I hope that there’s an opportunity for them to continue doing what they’re doing,” Mr. O’Guin said. “Their business, their merchandising, their touring — all of that stuff is very impressive. Those are things that I don’t want to see go away.”
Nathan Rabin, a journalist who wrote about Juggalo culture in his book “You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me,” said in a telephone interview that there was “something incredibly defanged” about the band’s Fuse appearances and television series.
The “outlaw element” of Insane Clown Posse was “a big part of their appeal, even now,” Mr. Rabin said, “and it’s hard to reconcile that with two affable, middle-aged men in clown makeup, making goofy comments about Britney Spears videos.”
What matters most, the band says, are the Juggalos, who paint their faces like Insane Clown Posse, consistently buy the records, merchandise and concert tickets, and probably number in the tens of thousands. (“They’re not millions,” Violent J said.)
