by Drew Fortune
I didn’t do anything about it and just bounced home. The next day, my left arm wasn’t working. I’m the kind of guy that when something is fucked up, I just assume the human body can heal anything. Now I go right to the fucking doctor, but back then, I thought I was indestructible. Two months went by, and I couldn’t turn my head to the left and couldn’t sleep on my side. Finally, my boy said, “You look like a fucking idiot. You gotta go to the doctor.” I fought tooth and nail, but right after the doctor X-rayed me, he said, “Holy shit. We need to get you into surgery right now.” I had shattered two of my discs, and the reason my arm didn’t work was because a shard from one of the discs was poking into my spinal cord. The weird part was that my hand worked fine, but my arm just flopped around. I could still rap shit, but it looked like I had a rubber arm on stage. To this day, my shit’s fucked up. I had broken my neck previous to that wrestling, and I let that one heal on its own. I’m not paralyzed, but I play it off real good.
Violent J: The scariest fan interaction I’ve had was when we played New York City. We got in the bus after the show and drove out of the city at night. After a few hours, we stopped at a Denny’s and were inside having a late-night, early morning breakfast. Suddenly, our bus driver said, “What the fuck is that?” He pointed out to the parking lot, and we could see a kid standing on top of the bus. He was in the process of climbing down when we all ran out there. He had gotten up on the bus sometime during our show in NYC and hung on the entire time on the road. This fucking kid rode on the roof through tunnels and highways all the way out of the city. He could have been fucking knocked off, or fallen, at any time.
We could see that he had been so scared that he had pissed himself up there. We had been driving for about two hours, so who knows what would have happened if we hadn’t stopped. We used to roll with this guy Tom Dub at the time, who was this skinny-ass, frail kid. I don’t know why he did it, but Tom Dub straight cold-cocked the kid. Tom was so weak that his fist just bounced off the kid’s face. The kid looked at Tom Dub like, “What the fuck?” and then he walked away like David Banner, with pissed pants.
Shaggy 2 Dope: Here’s a good story about how I got my first Rolex. We were on our Wicked Clowns from Outer Space Tour, and it was so fucking long that we started going a little bit crazy. We were out for two or three months at a time, and it wasn’t some cushy Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber tour. We were basically living in a minivan and starting to go fucking batty. One day, we pulled into some small town in the Midwest, and there was a little river running through town. We pulled up to it and said, “What can we do to get fucking paid right now?” We decided to hold the van for ransom. We found a board and a brick, put the brick on the gas, and the board between the brick and the gas, to hold it in place.
It was revving, and all we had to do was slam it into drive. We called our manager and said, “We’re about to drive this fucking van into a river. What do we get if we don’t?” I can’t remember what J asked for, but I said, “I want a Rolex.” He said, “Done.” We didn’t crash the van into the river because our demands were met. Our manager just didn’t want the hassle of dealing with it, and we would have probably ended up in jail. I don’t think you can purposely drive a van into a downtown river without going to jail, especially if you’re a clown.
Violent J: I don’t want to sound like a brutalizer of our fans, but this one happened when we were playing the third annual Gathering of the Juggalos. Back then, the fans used to storm the stage. They’d stage dive back down, but when more and more started rushing the stage, the stage got flooded and they stopped diving. After the show was over, they’d tear down the stage and smash up our set. I don’t wear much jewelry, but I do wear a diamond Hatchet Man, which is our logo, around my neck. When the fans stormed the stage, I noticed a kid eyeing my Hatchet Man. I pulled it off my neck, and stuck it in my pocket.
There were about 200 people on stage, so we were all smooshed together. The kid stuck his hand in my pocket, snatched my chain, and jumped off the front of the stage. I was on him, man. I smashed through the crowd with all my weight, dove off the stage, and landed right on top of him. I still had my cordless microphone in my hand, and I started bashing the kid in the head. I was trying to dig my chain out of his fist, which he was clenching really tight. I kept bashing him until his hand slowly opened up, and I got my necklace back.
I was totally winded at this point, but I pushed my way through the crowd, climbed over the barricade, and got backstage. I laid on my back, catching my wind, but the whole time I was thinking, “I gotta get the fuck outta here. I probably just killed that kid.” I yelled, “Get me outta here,” and my friends helped me up. They threw me in the van, and we floored it out of there. This Gathering was in Toledo, and on our way home, I saw a pond on the side of the road. We pulled off the exit, and I threw the microphone in the pond because I thought I had a murder weapon on my hands. Before I chucked it, I looked at the mic, and the end of it was totally flat from bashing that kid in the head. A microphone is basically a steel ball, so I really fucked that kid up.
When I got home, I called my manager and said, “After you cleared everyone out, was a kid laying there dead?” He said no, so I asked, “Nobody was injured?” He said, “No, what are you talking about?” I said, “Nothing, don’t worry about it” and hung up.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book wouldn’t exist without the artists who generously gave me their time and a little piece of their souls. I also want to thank all the publicists and managers who fought for me and whom I nearly bugged to death throughout this process. David and Jacob for taking a chance on me. Rob Elder for being the best mentor a guy could have. All my friends. All my family. All in my heart forever.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Drew Fortune is a pop-culture journalist and screenwriter, who has been actively publishing for the past ten years. He is a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Vulture, but his writings on music, film, and television have been published in Cosmopolitan, Playboy, SPIN, Billboard, the A.V. Club, Stereogum, and many others. His favorite bands are Ween, Superchunk, and The Replacements. He loves fly fishing and loitering in record stores.