Ask a Juggalo: Behind the Scenes

On Tuesdays, the crew at Metro Times usually holds an editorial meeting that can last several hours. It doesn't really take hours to plan out an issue; some of that time is spent spitballing, or coming up with blue-sky ideas on what we'd like to do. It was in that spirit, a few weeks ago, when we all agreed that some of the big questions we get from out-of-towners or when we travel aren't about Detroit so much as they are about ICP and Juggalo culture — and that we were often at a loss to answer them.

Riffing on the very successful column by Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican!, we joked that we needed a column called Ask a Juggalo. By the time we were done laughing, though, we thought it really would be a good idea to have an articulate, honest-to-goodness Juggalo answering common questions about ICP, the family and why Juggalos say shit like "whoop whoop." We called Jason Webber at Psychopathic Records, who found consensus for the idea there, and introduced us to Will Sigler, a funny, soft-spoken guy who's so into ICP he commutes several hours each day to Pyschopathic's metro Detroit office from his home in central Ohio!

As soon as we announced the column, a few naysayers condemned the venture on our Facebook page. But they were immediately drowned out by the tsunami of clown love we've felt from the Juggalo family. For a 350-word column to generate 21,000 hits in a little more than a day is absolutely outstanding. And the threads related to the initial column, both on the column and on our Facebook page, have turned into some rather heady exchanges of Juggalo knowledge. And that's great: If Metro Times aspires to do anything, it's to challenge prejudices and engender enlightened dialogue, and it looks like we're doing just that — with a little help from the family.