The joke's on you!
Riddle Box is a 1995 album by the Hip-Hop act Insane Clown Posse, and their only release on Jive Records, who notoriously screwed ICP by not marketing the album outside of Michigan, resulting in ICP having to drive to other markets to promote the album themselves.The album's lyrics deal with the uncertainty one faces upon death. The entity serving as the face of the third Joker's Cardnote of ICP's Concept Album saga is a Scary Jack-in-the-Box whose painted question mark has faded over time, representing the mystery of one's own afterlife. Upon turning the crank, the good see Shangri-La, and the evil are cast into Hells Pit.
While the album wasn't well reviewed at the time, it was Vindicated by History, as today it is seen as one of ICP's best albums.
Track listing
- "Intro"
- "Riddle Box"
- "The Show Must Go On"
- "Chicken Huntin'" (Slaughter House Mix)
- "Interview" (Skit)
- "Toy Box"
- "Cemetery Girl"
- "3 Rings"
- "Headless Boogie"
- "The Joker's Wild"
- "Dead Body Man"
- "Lil' Somthin' Somthin'"
- "Ol' Evil Eye"
- "12"
- "The Killing Fields"
- "I'm Coming Home"
The trope's on you:
- Black Comedy: On "Headless Boogie", Violent J witnesses zombies gathering in a cemetery to dance, and in one line he recalls "I even seen Kurt Cobain gettin' live", followed by the sound of a shotgun blast, essentially turning the Nirvana frontman's suicide, which was still recent in people's memories, into a dark joke.
- Body Horror: "The Killing Fields" is a descriptive depiction of Hell, referring to J trying to chase down and eat a baby billygoat with a man's head while a demon tries to chase J.
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Eclipsed by the Remix: "Chicken Huntin'" first appeared on ICP's previous album Ringmaster, in a more Funk-oriented Hip-Hop version. The "Slaughter House" Rap Rock remix, which appears on Riddle Box, is the version most people typically think of when they think of the song. - Edgar Allan Poe: "Ol' Evil Eye" is a pretty faithful rap adaptation of Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, with the protagonist split between two characters: Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope's. Violent J is haunted by the dead-looking eye of the Old Man, and sets out to murder him. Shaggy attempts to stop him, but once he sees the Old Man, he joins J's quest to murder the man. The music is pretty consistently dark and nightmarish, and actual excerpts from the Poe story appear sporadically.
- Full-Boar Action: Among the other horrors of "The Killing Fields" is waking up from a bed of nails that peels off your flesh, an eternally on fire house that causes J to stand only one night in the smoke, hanging bodies from trees and the walking dead that beg and pray for death and try everything to die, summers of literal fire reducing people to surviving in the sewers with rampant cannibalism, vicious wild pigs that feed off the dying and storms of blood and internal organs.
- Game Show: "The Joker's Wild" is about a game show in Hell in which damned souls are tortured for an audience of corpses with the promise of a cash prize they'll never get because the game is impossible to win.
- I Love the Dead: "Cemetery Girl" is about a man who digs up the body of his dead girlfriend and tries to have sex with it as it slowly falls apart in his hands.
- Nightmare Fuel: "12" is told from the perspective of a convicted murderer, Violent J, who rises from the grave as a zombie to seek bloody revenge on the 12 jurors, who show no remorse for their judgment and are declared by J to be just as guilty of murder as he is.
- Retroactive Recognition: Rich Murrell, the voice of the carnival barker on the Title Track, is better known as Legz Diamond of 9 Pistolas fame. He was the guitarist of a local Rock band called Coup Detroit who were trying to get signed to Psychopathic Records, but ICP didn't like the band. However, Violent J did like Rich's guitar playing, so ICP did record a guest spot for their 1996 album, in exchange for Rich doing a voiceover on Riddle Box. Subsequently, Rich would work frequently with ICP throughout his career, even getting a job at Psychopathic after his band broke up. He also played guitar on Kottonmouth Kings' Sunrise Sessions album.
- Sampling: "I'm Coming Home" samples "Confetti Day" by Hot Chocolate. "Cemetery Girl" samples the Carnival of Carnage song "Guts on the Ceiling". "Toy Box" samples Gong's "The Pot Head Pixies" and the theme song to Pee-wee's Playhouse.
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Screwed by the Network: Jive Records signed ICP to their short-lived Dance Music subsidiary Battery Records. This may not be easily apparent from some of the acts Jive signed later, with Jive becoming known for their Teen Pop and Boy Band acts in Late '90s and Turn of the Millennium, but Jive was best known as a Hip-Hop label in 1995. Their best known acts included DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Boogie Down Productions, Too $hort and Schoolly D, and the label also put out Kid Rock's debut rap album, Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast.note Jive told ICP that the album couldn't be over 60 minutes, and were pissed when they delivered Riddle Box and it was 71 minutes, though ICP convinced them that it only contained 60 minutes of music and that the extra 11 minutes were the skits. ICP were not considered easy to market to Hip-Hop listeners at the time, which is why Jive not only pushed them onto a Dance Music label, but also packaged a sampler of songs by the rock band (həd) p.e. along with Riddle Box when Jive signed that band in 1997.note Making matters worse, the label did not have faith that ICP could achieve any kind of national success, and didn't market Riddle Box outside of Michigan, so they had to go promote the album themselves, spending their own money to do what Jive was supposed to do. And on top of all of that, one of the executives told ICP that Jive thought that ICP were racist, and that they thought that "Chicken Huntin'" was mocking black people. Then when ICP tried to leave Jive for Hollywood Records, that label had to pay an extensive amount of money to buy out ICP's contract.note - Updated Re Release: In 2015, Psychopathic Records reissued the album in a 20th anniversary edition, featuring 17 bonus tracks.
- Vindicated by History: While Jive Records made no effort to distribute the album properly and the reviews were unfavorable at the time of release, today Riddle Box is seen as one of ICP's best albums, owing to it's trippy, gritty Hip-Hop style, which stands out from other Hip-Hop recordings of the time as well as the Rap Rock approach ICP would begin taking with their subsequent albums.
