The image of evangelical Christianity: the Insane Clown Posse

They've come out. They've revealed that all along, the Insane Clown Posse were evangelical Christians making Christian rap. Isn't it obvious with hindsight now?

It's a hilarious interview. The reporter gets them to spill the beans about exactly what they were thinking in some of their notorious lyrics. I love how he bonds with them.

"I don't know how magnets work," I say, to put him at his ease.

"Nobody does, man!" he replies, relieved. "Magnetic force, man. What else is similar to that on this Earth? Nothing! Magnetic force is fascinating to us. It's right there, in your fucking face. You can feel them pulling. You can't see it. You can't smell it. You can't touch it. But there's a fucking force there. That's cool!"

Shaggy says the idea for the lyrics came when one of the ICP road crew brought some magnets into the recording studio one day and they spent ages playing with them in wonderment.

"Gravity's cool," Violent J says, "but not as cool as magnets."

I also have a new understanding of science. It just doesn't get better than this:

"Ah!" I gesticulate. "If you're explaining to your five-year-old son what fog is, then why do you not want to meet scientists? Because they're just like you, explaining things to people..."

"Well," Violent J says, "science is... we don't really... that's like..." He pauses. Then he waves his hands as if to say, "OK, an analogy": "If you're trying to fuck a girl, but her mom's home, fuck her mom! You understand? You want to fuck the girl, but her mom's home? Fuck the mom. See?"

I look blankly at him. "You mean..."

"Now, you don't really feel that way," Violent J says. "You don't really hate her mom. But for this moment when you're trying to fuck this girl, fuck her! And that's what we mean when we say fuck scientists. Sometimes they kill all the cool mysteries away. When I was a kid, they couldn't tell you how pyramids were made..."

"Like Stonehenge and Easter Island," says Shaggy. "Nobody knows how that shit got there."

"But since then, scientists go, 'I've got an explanation for that.' It's like, fuck you! I like to believe it was something out of this world."

ICP seriously thought that when they released that goofy video about magnets that everyone would say, "Wow, I didn't know Insane Clown Posse could be deep like that." Apparently, for ICP, that line about not knowing how magnets work actually was the deepest bit of philosophy they'd ever contemplated.

I'd explain more but, you know, dudes and dudettes…your mom. I gots some bizness with her I got to take care of first.