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" Despite lacking hit records or critical acclaim, the Insane Clown Posse have once again made headlines with their lawsuit agains the FBI for targeting their notorious &amp;quot;Juggalo&amp;quot; fans. While publicity surrounding most bands usually relates to music, ICP gets attention for everything but. And they always have. And most likely always will. That&amp;#039;s because ICP is a band that isn&amp;#039;t really a band at all. Similar to a church or support group, they&amp;#039;re a social conduit that brings together self-perceived outsiders who find comfort in congregating around others who are convinced society has it out for them. The group has campaigned around this image and capitalized on outside attention in ways advertising agencies would envy. Before there were &amp;quot;us against them&amp;quot; lawsuits with the FBI and others, there were &amp;quot;us against them&amp;quot; battles with record companies. The group was relatively unknown outside their grassroots following when they recorded The Great Milenko for a Walt Disney subsidiary. But on the album&amp;#039;s release date, Disney pulled the record. (Apparently it took until then for someone at Disney to realize Mickey Mouse and necrophilia references didn&amp;#039;t exactly fit.) A flood of press resulted. And unlike advertisements, stories about the band being screwed by the man came organically. This helped propel Milenko to 1.7 million units sold, becoming ICP&amp;#039;s best-selling album. Later in the group&amp;#039;s career, videos for their music festival (The Gathering of the Juggalos) and their song &amp;quot;Miracles&amp;quot; went viral. Not because people attended the event or enjoyed the music, but because the videos were so awesomely bad and hilarious it became tough to differentiate between the group&amp;#039;s actual content and SNL spoofs that ensued. Which brought on more news articles, features on Comedy Central shows, and later their own series on Fuse. This is a group without a platinum record in 15 years whose largest annual event usually attracts less than 10,000 people. It&amp;#039;s also an entertainment empire with estimated $10 million annual revenue that gets high mileage per fan by using swag to push CDs, selling bonus discs for premiums, having multiple versions of albums with alternative cover art, carefully planning their label&amp;#039;s artist roster, using discounted events to boost attendance to profit off merchandise, and making their high-priced gear indispensable for fans to show the outside world their loyalty and brand (they even sell a &amp;quot;World&amp;#039;s Most Hated Band&amp;quot; t-shirt). While bitching about scientists and unofficially sponsoring discount soda appeals to a certain &amp;quot;low-status&amp;quot; demographic, the group&amp;#039;s business model and marketing strategies are far from unsophisticated. The band is so adept in public relations they boasted their fans &amp;quot;are so unified and prolific they&amp;#039;ve officially been labeled one of the nation&amp;#039;s most dangerous gangs by the FBI&amp;quot; in an infomercial for their album The Mighty Death Pop!. Now they&amp;#039;re suing the FBI over that same designation. And hardly anyone noticed the narrative switch. See, ICP is a social club with loyal members. A self-described &amp;quot;family.&amp;quot; Insiders worship and outsiders curiously follow while hoping to cover fascination with irony. The group just happens to make music. But tunes have become increasingly inconsequential to their brand and legacy. What gets left out in between stories about unpaid vendors, sexual harassment allegations, and the FBI/ACLU fiasco is their recent album. Because outside of the Juggalo &amp;quot;family,&amp;quot; few cared. It sold less than a hundred thousand copies in 2012. This is a group that remains newsy and relevant without music that&amp;#039;s either. Whether the chorus of &amp;quot;Chicken Huntin&amp;#039;&amp;quot; gives you nostalgic goose bumps or features on the band make you angry about modern entertainment, you must acknowledge no other band squeezes so much from so little. The ACLU partnership is merely the most recent example. It likely won&amp;#039;t be the last.  Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a26986/why-is-insane-clown-posse-so-popular/>