Admittedly, not many brands really need to ask that last question. But it has been relevant for well over a decade to the makers of Faygo soda. Faygo has been produced in Detroit for more than a century, in a variety of flavors, and markets itself with an air of lighthearted nostalgia. Insane Clown Posse, by contrast, while also from Detroit, are a duo (that’s right, it’s a posse of two) who wear face paint and tend toward “horrorcore” raps about violence and death. They were in the news earlier this month when fans at an annual music festival I.C.P. preside over drove the Web and reality-show personality Tila Tequila from the stage by throwing rocks and bottles at her.
Insane Clown Posse mention Faygo a lot and spray concertgoers with it during shows. This has resulted in one of the longest-running instances of an unsolicited celebrity endorsement. The strength of the association between the rappers and the soda can be gauged by Wikipedia’s entry on “juggalos,” as I.C.P.’s intensely loyal fans are known: “Common characteristics,” it notes, “include drinking the inexpensive soft drink Faygo and wearing face paint.”
Insane Clown Posse have been around since the early 1990s, but in the past year their profile has been unusually high. First, there has been a wave of news stories about law-enforcement agencies that seem to consider juggalos to be, essentially, a gang. This included a “Nightline” segment featuring the I.C.P. founders, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope. “Here’s the problem, though, Violent J,” Martin Bashir said in his erudite English accent, rattling off horrible crimes by self-proclaimed juggalos. The rappers, in full stage makeup, condemned such acts and argued that their work is no more violent than that of Stephen King. “We have face paint on,” Violent J pointed out. “We are entertainers.” This back and forth was interspersed with concert footage that included cases of Faygo onstage.
Meanwhile, the group was attracting mockery. A mind-numbingly long online infomercial for the Gathering of the Juggalos, a yearly multiday entertainment festival that’s sort of a lowbrow cross between Lollapalooza and Burning Man — “And if you like midgets, we’ve got midgets for ya,” etc. — was parodied on “Saturday Night Live.” (This year’s version, in mid-August, was where Tila Tequila was pelted.) Then a clip for the group’s song “Miracles,” which broke from the ax-murder narratives to offer a hilariously wide-eyed appreciation of such wonders as snow, giraffes, rainbows and magnets (interspersed with enthusiastic profanities), became a minor viral sensation.
This combination of attributes makes I.C.P. a bit of a puzzle, but it’s understandable that little of it would appeal to the makers of Faygo. “We wish they would do a limited-edition Faygo pop run with us,” Violent J once told Detroit’s Metro Times. “But whoever’s in charge now wants to steer clear of Insane Clown Posse. They consider themselves a family product. I guess they don’t make it to throw at each other.”
Violent J guessed correctly. Matthew Rosenthal, head of marketing for Faygo, is polite to a fault about I.C.P., acknowledging that they’re a “big, influential” group, and that whenever they play a new market, Faygo gets e-mail from fans wanting to know when the pop is coming to their area. “We wish them the best,” he says, but on the basis of the lyrical vulgarity alone, “they’re not at all mainline kind of guys.” And Faygo is mainline to a fault. Its site hosts various old advertisements in which cute children are often featured and a famous spot from 1970 in which a boatful of happy Faygo consumers sing a heartbreakingly sweet song about “Pony rides and Sunday nights/roller skates and yo-yos.” It concludes: “Remember when you were a kid? Well, part of you still is, and that’s why we make Faygo.” A modernized version of the tune from last year updates the lyrics to refer to memories of “rock ’n’ roll and hip-hop,” but that’s about as cutting edge as it gets.
It’s all so corny, actually, that it makes you wonder why it’s attractive to the supposedly scary Insane Clown Posse. It’s a regional signifier, and because it’s inexpensive it connects to the working-class life I.C.P. often celebrate. But aren’t successful rappers supposed to name-check Champagnes and Cognacs? Perhaps the idea is that the makeup, the theatrical posturing and the, uh, butchery lyrics are merely the childish fantasies and expressions of big, clownish kids. They’re just not the kinds of kids Faygo would put in a commercial or otherwise choose to represent its product — if, that is, the pop brand had any choice in the matter.