This…isn’t a good song, even by Insane Clown Posse’s standards. I don’t listen to them at all, but I know they don’t have the storytelling prowess of an Eazy-E or Nas, or the complex wordplay of Eminem or Lil Wayne. But “Miracles” doesn’t even match the lyrical quality of many other ICP songs, and yes, I did listen to a few other ones to ensure good data for a comparison. I personally don’t recommend doing that, but it had to be done to write all of this from an informed perspective.
Ignoring the pair’s crassness, the sentiment in “Miracles” isn’t terrible: expressing wonder at the natural world and shared human experiences isn’t anything new or unusual. Even if they aren’t believers (or they claimed to be at one point?), feeling overwhelmed by the grandeur and intricacy of creation can be an occurrence to people of any belief system.
One of the more famous, and mocked, lines, comes from Violent J, at around the 1:50 mark:
F-ckin’ magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Ya’ll motherf-ckers lyin’, and gettin’ me pissed
It’s easy to interpret this as the ignorance of man living in the post-Enlightenment technological world, but there’s something deeper here than brute anti-science. Violent J, despite being a lyricist, doesn’t have the proper linguistic tools to what I think he is really getting at. Modern education fails us again.
Violent J is seeking an answer, aside from a purely mechanical one, for electromagnetic phenomena, but we don’t recognize that because we assume (incorrectly) that the scientific explanation is all a man would need to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps that’s where some of his irritation lies, as well, not knowing there are ways to approach that don’t involve such falsifiable methods. His ultimate questions, then, might be worded thusly: Why are the laws of physics are the way they are? How could those laws be different and still make the universe work in such a way to support human life? Could life inhabit matter in different manner in order to conform to an altered state of natural laws, or is the current “version” of life the only possibility?
Since I’m obnoxious about my religious beliefs on this blog, I would also add to that list, more of a dramatically-worded, rhetorical observation than a question: “‘Lo! How vast and impenetrable is Yahweh! How I wonder at His ultimate craftsmanship, like the other elohim, at the point of man’s creation. ‘How He took this curious thing, “matter,” molded it into a similar form to these animals now scattered across Eden, and not only breathed His Spirit into it, but made them in our image. How man is both like and unlike us!’
These questions might be fun to entertain, but they are ultimately unknowable this side of mortal life. It’s only through conviction that the Lord may grant us while in our current fallen state that we could begin to form an answer. Even then, it would only make sense to the person receiving the conviction—another epistemological block to the modern man’s mind.
If you ever cross paths with Violent J, please offer him my regards and sympathies.
2 Comments
I ran across this recording some 20 years ago, as I recall. Yes, it’s rather blunt and lacking any lyrical finesse. It was designed to appeal to a certain audience, and we are not part of that audience. I had known some people for whom ICP was their voice. ICP knew early on that the “Juggalos” were their audience, for good or bad, and that audience has a peculiar way of approaching philosophical questions. I’m convinced you read it correctly, in that it was their way of rejecting secularism. If you ask them, it was secularism that spawned the violence they now feel they must use to defend themselves from being turned into NPCs.
ICP has an interesting pedigree…I looked into them in mid-1990s, as much as you could pre-Internet, because they got really popular without MTV or major-label backing. I wasn’t into rap at all, nor a great ton of secular music, but the way indie musicians did things back then…again, pre-Internet…was of interest.
I’m honestly not surprised you are familiar with them because they have a strong, very vocal midwest following. I don’t think there’s a lot of midwest hip-hop groups that cater to that voice, especially back then…so it’s not hard to see why they had a lot of appeal.