Get In The Spirit!

With Halloween right around the corner, the time is ripe for some of the world’s most talented emcee’s to come out and shine. Why Halloween you ask? Chances are that most of your are unfamiliar with the horrorcore music genre, which is truly a shame, because you are missing out on some truly amazing music. Halloween is a great time to get into some of this music, so I’m hoping that I inspire you to check out some horrorcore music so that you can add a new component to your Halloween season and broaden your horizons.

The horrorcore genre and culture is one that I think is truly fascinating. Horrorcore is incredibly hard to define for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the subject matter is diverse, and while some horrorcore artist incoprate incredbily explicit lyrics and imagery into their act, other artists in the genre are more likely to induce psychological horror and are less likely to rely on lyrics that include murder, canibalisim, necrophilia, and other horrible things. Another reason horrorcore is hard to define is because many of the artists in the genre refuse to be labeled as horrorcore, and give themselves an alternative label. More on that later. The only thing consistent about horrorcore is the heavy influence of rap and hip hop.

Origins of Horrorcore

One of the more interesting things about horrorcore rap is that it wasn’t invented by anyone, despite what some rappers will have you believe. It just kind of evolved from gangsta rap in the later 80′s and early 90′s. For a lot of people, the 1980′s was the prime of rap, and these people have good reason to believe that. Rap came a LONG way from 1980 to 1990, and most of the rappers who made a name for themselves in that era are STILL around and remembered fondly.

So therefore, with so much innovation and progress being made, the bar was continually being raised for various rapppers to take it to the next level. Eventually, gangsta rap started to rely more and more on shock value and scary themes. Rapping about violent neighborhoods gave way to rapping about violence in general. Rapping about violence eventually got exaggerated, as most themes in rap music tend to do, and evolved into it’s own thing.

Emergence In Detroit

One of the most frequently cited authors of the horrorcore genre is Detroit rapper Esham, who took the idea of shock value in rap music to a whole new level. Calling himself Esham the Unholy, Esham borrowed from heavy metal music, which often glorifies Satanism, and took that idea to rap music, which had NEVER been done before. The local Detroit scene was absolutely up in arms about the things that Esham was rapping about, which gained him a great deal of noteriety and infamy.

This was in 1989 and 1992 when Esham took off in popularity. Shortly afterward, Insane Clown Posse, also from Detroit, came out and began to tweak his horror themes and shock values, and made a style of music that was similar, but was also their own. ICP went on to inspire House of Krazees who later became Twiztid, and these three groups went on to inspire Eminem, all from Detroit as well.

Surge In Popularity

ICP quickly surpassed the popularity of popularity of Esham, and ended up becoming the biggest musical act to come out of Detroit in a very long time. Their success continued to grow, and soon spread all the way across America in 1997 with the release of the platinum album The Great Milenko. It wasn’t too long after this that Eminem took America by storm and quickly surpassed ICP’s popularity by taking the style of music that ICP, Esham, and Twiztid created and making it his own. His first two nationally released albums Slim Shady LP and Marshall Mathers LP include quite a bit of horrorcore influence, which evolved into more pop influenced lately, but it was the horrorcore influence that made Eminem become popular.

Eminem, however, did very little to give back to the horrorcore culture that he came up out of. He moved on, and the remaining acts, ICP, Esham, and Twiztid were left create the culture that now exists today. The late 90′s and early 2000′s saw the greatest popularity ever for these groups, and they eventually ended up joining forces to create music together under the same label. Of course, their popularity was small compared to Eminem’s, but they were operating a smaller scale operation, and didn’t need to sell as many albums as Eminem did in order to make a profit.

This surge in popularity gave rise to literally HUNDREDS of lesser known acts in the underground horrorcore scene. There’s no doubt that these groups were influenced by ICP, Esham, and Twiztid, who followed their trend and created their own brand of horror based music. The early 2000′s saw an incredible surge of new horrorcore music from people who had never been inspired to create music before in their lives, but had suddenly felt like they had found their calling.

Back To The Underground

Of course, with so many brand new musicians suddenly making music, there was a lot of mediocre (at best) music to wade through in one was hoping to find the good music. It was about this time that the mainstream popularity of ICP, Esham, and Twiztid began to fade as well, so horrorcore went into incubation in order to evolve into what it has become today. For several years, horrorcore basically existed only on the internet and was spread by word of mouth amongst the rare breed of people who would enjoy this type of music.

So, in the call and response style that hip hop was born out of, the underground horrorcore artists began to influence the more mainstream horrorcore artists, and vice versa. In this time period, the cream of the crop has risen to the top, and some incredibly great music has been made as a result. And now horrorcore has been able to run profitable tours, and come together for music festivals such as Wickedstock and The Gathering Of The Juggalos.

The Future Of Horrorcore

It seems to me that the trend is moving toward horrorcore becoming more and more popular, especially since so many of the artists who were inspired to become musicians in the early 2000′s are starting to come into their own and cultivate their own talent and create their own fanbases and style of music. Also adding to the popularity is the fact that after ICP and Twiztid’s mainstream appeal began to fade, their fanbase was reduced to a smaller, but more loyal group of people who went out and “recruited” more fans in a grassroots sort of way that liked the music for what it was, and not simply because it was the hot thing at the moment.

I foresee horrorcore blossoming into a more legitimate art form in the 2010′s, as more and more people realize that there’s nothing wrong with listening to horror themes in their music, just like there’s nothing wrong with watching horror themes in tv shows or movies. That’s basically what it boils down to. Horrorcore music is like a horror movie in music form. And like the horror movie genre, there are many types of horror to be enjoyed, and there’s something for just about everyone as long as they’re willing to open their mind and try something new. I’ll leave you with what I consider to be the cream of the crop of the horrorcore scene. I urge you to give all of these artists a listen, as I have grouped them in three categories: Legend, Mainstream, and Underground. Of course, these categories only apply to the genre itself, and if your not familiar with the genre, then you probably won’t be familiar with any of these groups.