“In My Room” by Insane Clown Posse

Insane Clown Posse’s “In My Room” is one of those types of songs which by and large revolves around a linear narrative. Moreover, it can be classified as being akin to horrorcore in a number of respects. But instead of jumping the gun, let’s analyze the story straight through.

The Story of “In My Room”

From the onset the vocalist is depicted as a loner, and perhaps we can even say outcast. The highlight of his day is getting off of work, for henceforth he can spend the rest of the afternoon/evening alone. Well actually, he won’t be alone in the truest sense of the word. 

Instead, as relayed, there’s a young female ghost, “demonic and bloody”, who comes to visit him. And more to the point is she being his lover, i.e. the entity, if you will, that holds him down throughout the night.

Another horrific element to this tale is detailed in the second verse. Here, the narrator proceeds to ‘twist off the head’ of ‘one of his mother’s cats’ due to it jumping on the bed and scaring the ghost away. And at this point, you may be saying to yourself ‘this reads like some sort of a sick love story’. 

But there’s ‘more to it than that’, according to the vocalist. Or stated otherwise, he is genuinely in love with this ghost. In fact he is so much so that if she fails to come around as anticipated, he reveals himself as the type of individual to “bring a shotgun to school”. We would further speculate that he actually goes on to use the weapon on innocent people. This brings up images of 1999’s Columbine High School massacre, which we will also get to shortly.

Story gets even more macabre!

And along those lines in the third verse, the ghost lets the vocalist know that she has to stop visiting as she was “spotted by the neighbor’s kid”. That is to say that she doesn’t want him to blow up the spot by letting people know that they’re been seeing each other. Indeed, she tells her lover that “she may [even] come to life” if only he can make the kids in the ‘hood, i.e. the small boy, keep their secret quiet. So the vocalist proceeds to not only murder the child but also his parents, who try to intervene.

Subsequently he returns to his room, waiting for the spirit to rematerialize, as promised. But instead it never returns. So in trying to make sense out of this narrative, our conclusion would be, obviously, that the vocalist is portraying the role of a deranged killer. 

And you know how sometimes a murderer goes to court and says a voice made him do it? Well that aforementioned spirit was his voice, so to speak, perhaps being a demon, as he alludes to. 

Another speculation can be that she too was the victim of a “bloody” murder, even for all we know someone he killed coming back to haunt him. Indeed, with him strangling cats and all, the signs were there beforehand that dude is deranged. 

In Conclusion

So all things considered, what the Insane Clown Posse are probably speaking to, in more realistic terms, is how there could be killers living amongst us, while their neighbors are unaware of just how dangerous these individuals are. 

In fact this song was dropped at a time when mass killings really started to be accepted as sort of a mainstay in the United States, in the aftermath of Columbine, the D.C. sniper attacks, the Lockheed Martin shooting and even 9/11, if you were to classify the latter as such. So it’s as if the homeys, in their own “insane” way, are advising the public to be on alert. Or at least that’s the point we hope they’re trying to get at.

When was “In My Room” released?

This track came out on 31 August 2004. It is one of the tracks found on Insane Clown Posse’s “The Wraith: Hell’s Pit” album. And the label that put it out is the amply named Psychopathic Records, a label co-founded by the Insane Clown Posse.

Credits

Bandmates Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope wrote this song alongside regular collaborator Mike P., who also produced “In My Room”. Shaggy and Violent, being the founders of Insane Clown Posse, are still down with the crew as of the writing of this post.

Insane Clown Posse

The Insane Clown Posse is a hip-hop crew from Detroit who has been at it for quite some time now, dropping 17 studio albums between 1992 and 2021. Their commercial heyday may have been in the late aughts. During that period, the Clowns’ albums “The Great Milenko” (1997) and “The Amazing Jeckel Brothers” (1999) both achieved RIAA platinum-certified status. 

But the height of their critical success came after the turn of the century. The said time the following album of their top Billboard’s Indie Albums chart:

• 2002’s The Wraith: Shangri-La
• 2004’s The Wraith: Hell’s Pit, 2009’s Bang! Pow! Boom! 
• 2012 The Mighty Death Pop!  

Also, the last two entries on that list broke the top 5 of the Billboard 200, as did “The Amazing Jeckel Brothers” which, all things considered, would be their best-performing album overall. And whereas Insane Clown Posse’s longevity is impressive and their name well-known, they never went on to become music superstars in the truest sense of the term.

Although Insane Clown Posse’s primary genre of specialization is listed as hip-hop, they are not the type of act that has been embraced by rap music purists. They are rather considered more along the lines of rockers in that regard. In fact as far as the mainstream rap community goes, what they are perhaps best known for is having a notable feud with fellow Detroit native Eminem earlier in Slim Shady’s career.