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Juggalo
Insane Clown Posse and the World They Made is a vivid journey into the heart of a misunderstood subculture. Through firsthand reporting, including interviews with Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope of the Insane Clown Posse, their friends and family, and numerous devoted fans, Juggalo explores the lives of the proud outsiders who are frequently labeled as a threat or dismissed as a joke.
Author and journalist Steve Miller follows ICP across America, hanging out with Juggalos before and after shows, at the legendary annual Gathering of the Juggalos, and at work and home to share their stories. In addition, Juggalo dives deep into the FBI's misguided assault on Juggalo culture and the misidentification of this devoted group of horrorcore fans as a gang.
Juggalo is also the chronicle of two hard-luck kids from Detroit who created an empire and became the unwitting stars of a uniquely American grassroots success story. Without the help of radio airplay and with little love from the music industry establishment, ICP went platinum and fostered one of America's most durable subcultures.
Juggalo is required reading for the hardcore fan and pop culture buff alike, a scrupulously researched account of a subculture unlike any other -- one that so shook the establishment it launched a federal investigation -- as well as a window into the world of the Juggalos and the singular mythology of their underworld apocalypse.
Author and journalist Steve Miller follows ICP across America, hanging out with Juggalos before and after shows, at the legendary annual Gathering of the Juggalos, and at work and home to share their stories. In addition, Juggalo dives deep into the FBI's misguided assault on Juggalo culture and the misidentification of this devoted group of horrorcore fans as a gang.
Juggalo is also the chronicle of two hard-luck kids from Detroit who created an empire and became the unwitting stars of a uniquely American grassroots success story. Without the help of radio airplay and with little love from the music industry establishment, ICP went platinum and fostered one of America's most durable subcultures.
Juggalo is required reading for the hardcore fan and pop culture buff alike, a scrupulously researched account of a subculture unlike any other -- one that so shook the establishment it launched a federal investigation -- as well as a window into the world of the Juggalos and the singular mythology of their underworld apocalypse.
337 pages, Paperback
First published June 28, 2016
26 people are currently reading
104 people want to read
About the author
Steve Miller
6 books27 followersSteve Miller is an investigative reporter with 19 years of experience in daily newspaper and magazine reporting. Miller has covered countless trials and murder cases, including serving time as a court and cops beat reporter at the Dallas Morning News and writing about numerous national crimes as a national reporter for the Washington Times, People magazine and U.S. News and World Report. Miller, the former vocalist in the Midwest punk rock outfit the Fix, is also a music journalist and has been a contributing editor at Your Flesh Magazine since 1991. Books: A Slaying in the Suburbs; The Tara Grant Murder (Penguin/Berkley, 2009) Touch and Go: The complete Hardcore Punk Zine '79-'83 (Bazillion Points, 2010) by Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson, edited by Steve Miller Girl, Wanted: The Search for Sarah Pender (Penguin/Berkley, 2011) Johnny Ramone Memoirs (Abrams, 2012) (co-editor) Nobody's Women: The Crimes and Victims of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Serial Killer (Penguin/Berkley, 2012)
Detroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Five Decades of Rock 'n Roll in America's Loudest City (Da Capo, 2013
Detroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Five Decades of Rock 'n Roll in America's Loudest City (Da Capo, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 27, 2016
This book concentrates mostly on the troubles besetting Insane Clown Posse (ICP) and the Juggalos when the FBI declared them a criminal gang in 2011. What interests me about the followers of ICP is that they treat one another as family, irrespective of race, color, creed, or family background. I was hoping to read more about the kids who attend the gatherings than about ICP's troubles with the police over the FBI gang classification.
May 22, 2017
If you're not down with
the Dark Carnival unfriend
me right this instant.
the Dark Carnival unfriend
me right this instant.
September 18, 2025
WHOOP WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP..
January 11, 2017
Juggalos, or the fan base of the Insane Clown Posse (ICP), have always struck me as a curiosity. In keeping with subculture studies, this book does a sympathetic job of portraying a truly dismissed cohort of music fans. In fact, more shockingly after reading this book, a subculture wrongly persecuted by the FBI as a "gang", generally disparaged by the music industry and media as a "low-brow" or "less than" culture of engagement with music.
After last year's election, I am trying to personally open my eyes and research the reality of other perspectives I generally reflexively dismiss.
The Juggalos describe themselves as a "family", a group comprised of a wide swath of the disfranchised, broken home raised folks trying to find a thing worth latching on to; in this case, it happens to be the Insane Clown Posse and related label groups. The active effort to turn the signifying aspects of Juggalo life into probable cause for harassment by law enforcement is really a way of society saying, what you are doing is too strange, even if harmless, it must be eradicated as an example, "step in line."
I'm not forgiving or saying I want to get down with ICP, but I can see that as foreign as this subculture is to me as an outsider, it remains an affirmative community for the Juggalos, collaborative, philanthropic and worthy of my respect for this reason alone. The Juggalo community provides a sense of belonging that is readily withheld from a large swath of the population for various reasons, be they race, class, access to education or solid social structures free from abuse. Making Juggalos the butt of jokes, negates the lived experiences of the subculture, and reaffirms the Juggalos experience of "elite" discussions about music. The media trendsetters outright dismiss Juggalos because they espouse a carnival-esque carelessness about social norms, and gladly self-organize successfully apart from the music industry machine...to loosely quote Chomsky, they are "the threat of the good example" to the Establishment, consequently, they must be "othered", criminalized and actively lampooned to negate the positive aspects of participation.
So yeah, who knew a book about Juggalos would get me thinking about this so much?
I am still not a fan of Horrorcore hip-hop, just can't get down with the messaging, nor naive to the arguments about misogyny and violence in the lyrics. However, I do respect the work the band has made in promoting/creating a sub-culture, undertaking a federal lawsuit to get removed from the gang task force list, and certainly the Juggalo community for what they are, and continue to be for one another in the face of nothing but scorn.
Still not wearing facepaint, getting sprayed with Faygo, or whatever, but I might holler back a respectful "whoop whoop" instead of assuming the worst like I might have before reading this book.
After last year's election, I am trying to personally open my eyes and research the reality of other perspectives I generally reflexively dismiss.
The Juggalos describe themselves as a "family", a group comprised of a wide swath of the disfranchised, broken home raised folks trying to find a thing worth latching on to; in this case, it happens to be the Insane Clown Posse and related label groups. The active effort to turn the signifying aspects of Juggalo life into probable cause for harassment by law enforcement is really a way of society saying, what you are doing is too strange, even if harmless, it must be eradicated as an example, "step in line."
I'm not forgiving or saying I want to get down with ICP, but I can see that as foreign as this subculture is to me as an outsider, it remains an affirmative community for the Juggalos, collaborative, philanthropic and worthy of my respect for this reason alone. The Juggalo community provides a sense of belonging that is readily withheld from a large swath of the population for various reasons, be they race, class, access to education or solid social structures free from abuse. Making Juggalos the butt of jokes, negates the lived experiences of the subculture, and reaffirms the Juggalos experience of "elite" discussions about music. The media trendsetters outright dismiss Juggalos because they espouse a carnival-esque carelessness about social norms, and gladly self-organize successfully apart from the music industry machine...to loosely quote Chomsky, they are "the threat of the good example" to the Establishment, consequently, they must be "othered", criminalized and actively lampooned to negate the positive aspects of participation.
So yeah, who knew a book about Juggalos would get me thinking about this so much?
I am still not a fan of Horrorcore hip-hop, just can't get down with the messaging, nor naive to the arguments about misogyny and violence in the lyrics. However, I do respect the work the band has made in promoting/creating a sub-culture, undertaking a federal lawsuit to get removed from the gang task force list, and certainly the Juggalo community for what they are, and continue to be for one another in the face of nothing but scorn.
Still not wearing facepaint, getting sprayed with Faygo, or whatever, but I might holler back a respectful "whoop whoop" instead of assuming the worst like I might have before reading this book.
July 20, 2019
The rating isn’t for any other reason than the writing is terrible. Disjointed, poorly written. At the end of the book, in a sentence about Psychopathic Records, the author pauses his thought to tell us that Psychopathic Records is ICP’s record label, AS IF WE DIDN’T KNOW THAT FROM EARLIER IN THE BOOK! This is just a really small but indicative example about how he is not in control of the subject matter, and how the book wasn’t edited or proofread. It’s chock full of typos.
ICP is terrific, but god I wish a competent writer tackled this subject instead.
November 19, 2022
ICP's backstory is really interesting but too short and general, doesn't dive in deep at all.
The endless FBI/police/crime etc... reports and articles fill up about 40% of the book and get boring real quick.
And if all the FBI/gang-classification stuff was put in 1 single chapter it wouldn't have bothered me so much but it's randomly spread throughout the whole book.
Would have liked to read/learn more about the juggalos and their culture instead, but since Miller is just another journalist who's looking in from the outside he doesn't know himself of course.
The many contradictions are mind boggling too ("Juggalos aren't violent criminals" but there's an endless parade of violent crimes committed by juggalos articles, "juggalos don't care and even relish in the ridicule and hate of the mainstream & media" but every little comedy sketch or insult in the media about juggalos is named and called "unfair and mean", juggalos hate MTV stars but there's a long list full of anecdotes of MTV stars that successfully played at gatherings...)
Violent J, Shaggy 2 Dope and the whole juggalo family deserve much better than this.
Miller, stick with your dinosaur rock bands and true crime stories, cause you're making the juggalos look bad and weak.
You wrote Tila Tequila basically asked for it because she was an outsider invading juggalo territory? Well so are/were you.
The endless FBI/police/crime etc... reports and articles fill up about 40% of the book and get boring real quick.
And if all the FBI/gang-classification stuff was put in 1 single chapter it wouldn't have bothered me so much but it's randomly spread throughout the whole book.
Would have liked to read/learn more about the juggalos and their culture instead, but since Miller is just another journalist who's looking in from the outside he doesn't know himself of course.
The many contradictions are mind boggling too ("Juggalos aren't violent criminals" but there's an endless parade of violent crimes committed by juggalos articles, "juggalos don't care and even relish in the ridicule and hate of the mainstream & media" but every little comedy sketch or insult in the media about juggalos is named and called "unfair and mean", juggalos hate MTV stars but there's a long list full of anecdotes of MTV stars that successfully played at gatherings...)
Violent J, Shaggy 2 Dope and the whole juggalo family deserve much better than this.
Miller, stick with your dinosaur rock bands and true crime stories, cause you're making the juggalos look bad and weak.
You wrote Tila Tequila basically asked for it because she was an outsider invading juggalo territory? Well so are/were you.
July 25, 2018
Interesting book about an interesting group of people. I grew up in a small town with a lot of Juggalos and they were mostly great people. I've never been an ICP fan, but they never bothered me either. This book focuses a decent amount of time on the aftermath of the FBI's claim that Juggalo should be classified as a gang.
I love the down-to-Earth writing style that comes off as almost conversational. The only knock against this book is that instead of presenting everything chronologically, it jumos around a lot, changing from anecdote to anecdote numerous times per chapter. I never got lost of anything, but some of the changes were so sudden, I would have to backtrack a page or two because I had somehow missed the change from story to story.
Aside from that, a really neat book about a band I never thought I'd take the time to learn about.
I love the down-to-Earth writing style that comes off as almost conversational. The only knock against this book is that instead of presenting everything chronologically, it jumos around a lot, changing from anecdote to anecdote numerous times per chapter. I never got lost of anything, but some of the changes were so sudden, I would have to backtrack a page or two because I had somehow missed the change from story to story.
Aside from that, a really neat book about a band I never thought I'd take the time to learn about.
November 9, 2023
I just wanna say I don’t listen to ICP BUT I love any kind of cultural movement and I love when bands have lore and camp. With that being said, I really liked this book! I keep going back on the star cause I felt the author was extremely bias. Like I know their fan base is fiercely loyal but I wish it was more neutral. I did learn a ton though and I think it’s awful how the cops and FBI treated them. Yeah a lot of juggalo’s do some bad stuff but what group isn’t like that?? I also liked the part about them donating their money to charity and doing food drives, that was so unexpected!
January 3, 2025
Incredibly interesting dip into a subculture that was definitely present in my middle and high school -- equal parts profanely juvenile and surprisingly heartfelt, transformative, awash in solidarity. The two titular Clowns come from turbulent and low-income home lives and remember what it is to suffer, and so their whole vibe is theatrics and greasepaint and WWE but also this weird and moving Christianity bound up in mutual aid. Not sure that the FBI's battle with ICP was a solid enough spine here, which makes the book muddle, but I'm glad I read it.
September 13, 2019
I’m not a juggalo but the culture and fanbase they’ve created has always amazed me. They have had a big enough impact to gain the FBIs attention and earn them accusations of benign a gang. And the fact they have been doin it for so long? If you aren’t a juggalo read this book to learn about a new culture and how people can come together. This book gives hope.
September 19, 2021
This man is writing sympatheticly about a group of social outsiders and yet has the gall to malign and insult fantasy roll play fans? What a joke. This book is also generally poorly written with amateurish, immature outbursts.
ICP and their fight for first amendment freedom deserve better story telling than this.
ICP and their fight for first amendment freedom deserve better story telling than this.
June 25, 2023
Book just continues to talk about the same thing over and over and over. It got really boring and could’ve been summed up into an article. I thought it would be more about ICP and how they got started. It mostly just talked about the Juggalos being labeled a gang and that they were just a big family the entire 281 pages.
December 3, 2022
3.5 stars. Research. A comprehensive history but a bit repetitive at times.
September 9, 2017
More about the political harassment of the subculture by the police and FBI then the actual sub-culture of Juggalos, still an informative read.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews