ICP has been around long before Psychopathic Records. Back in those days, the ICP stood for Inner City Posse and it was an organized (unorganized?) street gang. The gang had a lot of members at different points, but once they started making some noise in the streets of Detroit, rival gangs began to hate on ICP and many of the members of the gang stopped gang banging. Three members, however, began to rap. Their real names were Joe Bruce, Joey Utsler, and Joey's older brother John. However, they rapped under the names Violent J, Shaggy 2 Dope, and John Kickchass.
Together, the three of them recorded a few albums. First was Bass-ment Cutz which was recorded in a basement on a Kareokee machine. That album was dubbed on tapes and only a few were sold in Southwest. Another album was just Violent J with some guy named D-Lyrical. That is also a Kareokee tape and it's pretty wack. ICP's debut studio album Dog Beats was recorded as a maxi-single in 1991. ICP needed help to sell it and thus visited a record store owned by a friend of Violent J's brother Jumpsteady (who was in Desert Storm at the time). The owner of that record store would go on to be the biggest factor to ICP's later success: his name was Alex Abbiss.
Alex sold hundreds of copies of Dog Beats in his record store and eventually, he asked if ICP needed a manager. They jumped on that like Shaggy jumped on Missy in Big Money Hustlas: quickly. Alex knew from the start that ICP couldn't be beggin' major labels. They had to get the labels to come to them. Together, the 4 of them formed Psychopathic Records in Alex's basement. Right then and there, Shaggy sat down and drew the hatchetman that we all know and represent today.
The trio of rappers headed back into the studio to record the follow-up LP to Dog Beats which was to be called Gangsta Codes. However, halfway into recording the album, everything in J and Shaggy's life flipped upside down. According to them, they were touched by the Dark Carnival. They were told to spread the message in the only way they really knew how: thru music. They put down the guns, dropped all the gangsta shit, and picked up the axes. They painted their faces. Instead of gangstas, J and Shaggy became clowns. And these clowns had a point. Instead of your usual shoot-em'-up shit, J and Shaggy now had a mission to inform the world of it's evil doings and it was in the form of Six Joker's Cards. These albums, the Joker's Cards, would each show a different side of yourself. For instance, Ringmaster. The Ringmaster is basically all your sins formed into one big monster. If all your sins formed into a monster, how big would you monster be? Could you defeat that monster? If so, then up to Heaven you go. If not..burn, bitch, burn!
John Kickchass, however, was utterly fucking lost. He didn't understand this Dark Carnival clown shit at all. Eventually, it became too much for him and he left the group. ICP was now only down to two. That in itself was wack because the Gangsta Codes album was only halfway done. So now they had half an album with John on it, but now he was gone. ICP's homie Greez-E replaced him for a little bit, but that was short lived. It was only J and Shaggy now.
To get the album out to a wider audience in Detroit, ICP paid for the services of two of Detroit's biggest rap stars at the time. The first was the godfather of "acid rap" himself, the one and only Esham. And the second was a guy you may have heard of before: his name was Kid Rock.
They paid Esham $500 and Kid Rock $600 and they both appeared on the album. Finally, it was done. ICP renamed the album to fit the carnival style. It was now called Carnival of Carnage. The album was produced by Mike E. Clark with a lot of help from Esham. It finally hit the streets. The era of the first Joker's Card had begun.
Next up was Beverly Kills 50187, which was a short E.P. album. It also featured a song with Esham. The juggalos were beginning to build. Next was the second Joker's Card, the legendary Ringmaster. That album is a cult favorite amongst many juggalos and it is also the album where the carnival side of ICP really begins to show. Next up was The Terror Wheel E.P. which was a sideshow album to the 2nd Joker's Card.
Around this time, ICP was outselling every other Detroit rap act by the thousands, but still had no record deal. They were still selling their albums locally in record stores across Detroit and Toledo thru their Psychopathic record label. In order to reach the masses, ICP needed a deal with a major label. And just in time, Jive Records appeared. They offered ICP a little bit of money to release the 3rd Joker's Card. Seeing as to how they really knew nothing about the music industry and were just eager to have the album out, ICP signed a contract with Jive and ended up getting hoe'd big time by the label.
The 3rd Card, Riddlebox, was released in 1995, however was only released in and around Michigan, where ICP had already built a following. No national release or anything. This wasn't helping ICP at all. So they put together a huge street team and ICP headed down to Texas and got damn near every record store in the fucking state to order Riddlebox. The album blew up down south.
ICP, however, refused to turn in their next album to Jive and so they were stuck under contract. Out of nowhere, Hollywood Records came along and offered to buy ICP's contract off of Jive so the clowns could sign with Hollywood. How did Hollywood get the money to buy ICP's contract? They're owned by Disney, that's how. Disney has mad loot. Disney could buy yo' mama if it wanted to. And so Hollywood bought out ICP's contract and suddenly, ICP was the newest recording group to sign with Disney. Weird, huh?
Anyway, Hollywood Records assurred ICP that Disney had nothing to do with the music they put out. So ICP turned in the 4th Joker's Card, the Great Milenko. Hollywood, however, removed 3 songs from the album because of their content. So much for the "no Disney censoring" shit, eh? Anyway, a tour was lined up and in June of 1997, the album finally hit shelves nationwide.
BLAM!! 6 hours later, that bitch was gone. At the moment, Disney was under heavy media scruitiny because a big ass group of Southern Baptists had decided to boycott Disney because of it's Gay Day celebration of homosexuals. And so Disney was being watched closely by the entire world. And the last thing Disney wanted was to be caught with it's hand in the juggalo cookie jar. So they tried to get the Milenko album pulled from shelves before anyone noticed that Disney was putting out an album that was so vulgar and wicked.
Backfired like a bitch though!! Alex Abbiss singlehandedly saved ICP's career that night. When the album was pulled, he called up the L.A. Times and gave them the entire story. The next day, it was fucking front page news in Los Angeles baby! The day after that, it was worldwide news. Never before had an album been pulled from shelves like that so soon after it's release. The spotlight was on Disney again and Mickey Mouse was caught with his pants down.
Everyone picked up on the story, from newspapers and news telecasts across the country to MTV to even fucking CNN. It was news everywhere. Suddenly, now that Hollywood had decided it wanted to get rid of ICP, every record label in the country was looking to sign ICP. The clowns finally chose to sign with Island Records because, according to Violent J, "They had the hottest bitches working there."
However, Disney wouldn't let ICP out of their Hollywood contract unless they paid Disney two million dollars. ICP didn't have that kind of money and Island didn't either. Alex Abbiss, former-scrubby-ass-record-store-owner-turned-ICP-manager then had a meeting with CEO of Disney Company, the legendary Michael Eisner. Eisner is probably the most powerful man in the entertainment industry. Well, quite simply, Alex had a meeting with him and Alex told Eisner that if he didn't lower that fucking price, he would have the loyal juggalos come and burn down Disneyland. The Magic Kingdom would be ruins! After that meeting, Disney lowered the price from 2 million to something SUBSTANTIONALLY lower and ICP was able to get off of Hollywood Records and sign with Island.
In the meantime, ICP signed two new acts to Psychopathic Records. The first was Myzery, who dropped a fresh ass E.P. album called Para La Isla and then left the label. The next was Twiztid. Twiztid is fresh as fuck. The two members, Jamie Madrox and Monoxide Child were former members of the now defunct Detroit horrorcore group the House of Krazees. However, rumored problems with HOK's manager prompted Jamie and Monoxide to leave the group and search for a new place to make their music. Psychopathic became that place. Together, they formed Twiztid and their debut album, Mostasteless was released in 1998 and featured songs with ICP and Myzery. The album was only released locally at first, but was later re-released nationwide by Island Records.
In only a few short years, Twiztid has crashed onto the music scene with amazing force. Juggalos everywhere have welcomed Twiztid everywhere and just recently, Twiztid has been on their second headlining nationwide tour. Don't be surprised to see Twiztid's next album go platinum, bitch! Anyway, it was time for the 5th Joker's Card, The Amazing Jeckel Brothers. Featuring guest appearances from Ol' Dirty Bastard, Snoop Dogg, Twiztid, and a remake of a Geto Boys song, this was ICP's most rap-style album to date. It debuted at #4 on the Billboard albums chart, proving to the world that ICP ain't nothin' to fuck with. A month later, Twiztid re-released Mostasteless nationwide, this time with a few new tracks and the album went gold. ICP and Twiztid had put Psychopathic on the map.
In the time between the time the 4th and 5th Card was released, ICP went into wrestling, first entering ECW, and then the WWF and eventually WCW. They left all 3 federations on rather shitty terms and, having had enough of the other guys' bullshit, started their own federation, JCW: Juggalo Championshit Wrestling, which went on to become the 3rd highest grossing wrestling fed in the United States, ahead of WCW.
During this time, Psychopathic signed another artist to the label: Blaze Ya Dead Homie. Blaze is...well, he's dead. And he's ya homie. And he spits his fucking raps gangsta style at yo ass and he's fucking fresh. Blaze is formerly of some old Detroit rap group called 2 Krazy Devils, but that shit sucked so he came to Psychopathic and now he's fresh. His debut E.P. album is in stores now and it's phatter than yo' mama, and that's pretty fuckin' phat.
In July of 2000, the first annual Gathering of the Juggalos was held, featuring concerts from ICP, Twiztid, Blaze Ya Dead Homie, and many more. It was a 2 day event held in Novi, Michigan and over 7,000 juggalos showed up and showed each other nothing but love during the festival.
In October of 2000, Psychopathic released 3 new albums. Bizzar/Bizaar was a double ICP album, two seperate CDs, sold seperately and released on the same day. The albums debuted at #21 and #22 respectively, not bad considering the fact that releasing two albums on the same day is probably not the smartest marketing move.
And also that same day, Twiztid released it's second major album Freekshow. It debuted at #51 on Billboard charts, proving that Twiztid is a force to be reckoned with.
Psychopathic has also ventured into movies with the release of Big Money Hustlas, which features Twiztid, Myzery, the Jerky Boys, Rudy Ray More (Dolemite), the Misfits, Mick Foley, and Harland Williams as Officer Harry Cox himself.
At the Gathering of the Juggalos in Toledo, OH in 2001, the long-awaited Dark Lotus was released, with outside-rapper Marz being one of the members. He was later dropped from the group. However, at the Gathering that year was intended to be the world's first glimpse at the 6th Joker's Card. Unfortunately, a riot of sorts started during ICP's concert and the stage and equipment was destroyed and the 6th was never revealed. Later on that year, Psychopathic would go on to release a "glimpse" of the 6th on the Hatchet Rizing Dark Lotus tour.
Without warning in late 2001, ICP announced that they were going into hiding. It was time to record the 6th Joker's Card. And into hiding they went. And into hiding they would stay for 8 months.
However, Psychopathic didn't stop. In April, 2002, Twiztid released their long-awaited EP "Mirror Mirror" and soon after launched a MONSTER tour (like, somewhere around 80 - 100 dates). It went on for MONTHS as Blaze and Anybody Killa opened up for them. The Mirror Mirror Tour was a huge success and, for once, Twiztid made it thru an entire tour without getting arrested for something.
But it was soon time for the Gathering of the Juggalos 2002, this time in Peoria, IL. It was to be ICP's first appearance since disappearing from sight 8 months ago, and they reappeared with a brand new look. New, colorful face paint, Shaggy with the old school long ass dreads, and J a lot skinnier than when he went into hiding. In between riots, tear gas, police, pepper spray, and the new release of Jumpsteady's YEARS in the making "Chaos Theory" album finally dropping, the Gathering finally revealed the information about the 6th and final Joker's Card. The Wraith. Shangri-La. Hell's Pit. Two albums, The Wraith's exhibition of the afterlife presented on 2 CDs.
Before the 6th was to drop, Psychopathic had one more major announcement: the legendary, godfather, creator, innovator, and king of horrorcore, wicked ass ACID RAP finally signed to Psychopathic. In some people's eyes, it was long overdue, but it finally became a reality when ESHAM became an official member of the Psychopathic family. He immediately released a Greatest Hits album and has a new release scheduled for 2003. The first part of the almighty 6th Joker's Card was released on Nov. 5th, 2002. It debuted at #15 on Billboard charts and dropped like a rock from there, but who gives a fuck. At the time of this writing, ICP is scheduled to begin a MONSTER worldwide tour and Twiztid is recording their most anticipated album ever: "The Green Book". All Psychopathic artists are scheduled to release albums this year and it's looking to be an exciting 365 days for Psychopathic Records.
