There was an Insane Clown Posse album released in the last decade which I became instantly addicted to after my very first listen. The album was packed with catchy songs, memorable lyrics (for better and worse) and all-round great performances from the clowns. And yet, I have never seen this album break out of other Juggalo’s bottom three Joker’s Card rankings, and aside from just not ‘feeling it’ nobody seems able to say why, preferring instead to name it followed by ‘for obvious reasons’. I fucking love this album, I’ve always loved it and will always love it.
I am referring to The Marvelous Missing Link: Lost.
I’m going to say straight away that I cannot show the same amount of love to the Found variant of The Missing Link, and while I in no way think it is a bad album, in my opinion it is the weakest Joker’s Card (not ICP album) released thus far. Astoundingly, the Outtakes version of the Missing Link series held back some of the best tracks from each. The titular track, The Missing Link, is among the best song from across all three albums, and I honestly believe it was only included in the Outtakes track list because you would need to toss a coin to decide which record it belongs on out of Lost and Found.
Back to Lost; one of my favourite things in music is when an album’s intro / first track provide a gradual, almost ominous, build-up before unleashing all Hell when the first actual track kicks in. This case is personified within Lost as following one of the darker album introductions ICP have had in recent times, the beat finally explodes into the title track, before escalating further with the foot-tapping, head-bobbing banger that is Apocalypse.
Two of my absolute favourite ICP songs of the last decade are on Lost, with the first being a song I cannot help but scream along to the hook of every time it plays: Confederate Flag. We’re all familiar with the ‘Fuck your rebel flag’ chant from way back in Your Rebel Flag on Carnival of Carnage, and it made its welcome return in the second deck of Joker’s Cards 23 years later!
The second is the hugely under-appreciated masterpiece: You Should Know. This is a song that I am confident I have never heard anyone else talk about and it truly remains a mystery to me that it has not yet become an all time Juggalo classic. Like with an increasing number of ICP songs it only features Violent J, but I think it is one of his best solo songs to date. If you’re not sure why I’m awarding it such high praise, go and listen to it one more time and see if there’s something you missed from before. For me, the intense lyrics and catchy hook (best performed in the shower) are forever etched into my brain, and I never get tired of this song.
In the interest of keeping this article balanced, I will concede that releasing Vomit as the first single and Explosions as the first music video weren’t great choices on the clowns part, when any of the other songs I’ve mentioned so far would have promoted the record much better than these did.
Those petty gripes aside, while I couldn’t call The Marvelous Missing Link: Lost my favourite Joker’s Card of even the second deck, I believe it is the Insane Clown Posse record I have listened to the most in the years since it released. The album will be 7 years old at the end of this coming April, and I still love it as much now as I did in 2015 when it first blew my mind into bloody chunks.
Can we also take a moment to appreciate that Lost is one of the very few ICP projects to release on the original date it was announced with..
To conclude, Lost is an outstanding example of the wicked shit we know, love and expect from Insane Clown Posse. If you got into ICP through the horrorcore subgenre then this should absolutely be the album for you. A true nod to the horror packed exhibit of Shangri-La: Hell’s Pit and a brilliant achievement in music as a whole from Violent J & Shaggy 2 Dope. If you can’t see that, all I can tell you is you need to
Find Your Missing Link, Find The Light..
