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It may not be what long-time fans of the Insane Clown Posse want to hear.

But Violent J isn’t angry anymore. Or at least not as angry as he once was.

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It’s how he explains the evolution of the horrorcore hip-hop duo over the past few decades, particularly when comparing those dark and gruesome “Joker’s Card” records of the 1990s to more recent output such as 2015’s surprisingly upbeat The Marvelous Missing Link (Found). Success has mellowed them to a certain degree.

“Flat out, we’re just not as mad,” says J, born Joseph Bruce, in an interview from his Detroit studio. “I’m not mad at life like I was when we were making those earlier records. If I was, I’d be faking it and I don’t want to fake anything in our music. There’s still plenty of anger. There’s tremendous amounts of anger. But most of our music today is more based on dealing with depression and anxiety and heaven and hell, more things that we believe are reality-based, like racism and stuff like that. Whereas the old stuff was more of an escape from reality. It was like a trip out of reality, a way to escape your life.”