The five best horrorcore albums of all time
Of all of hip-hop’s subgenres, horrorcore is perhaps the most controversial. Simultaneously not taken seriously by plenty of rap purists, while being taken away too seriously by hand-wringing conservative types who fear its influence upon their kids, horrorcore has always occupied a weird space. It’s an extreme style, defined by creepy sounds and the most grotesque imagery, but, for all of that, it can also be whip-smart and engrossing.
Horrorcore, like gangsta rap before it, employs the use of bloody imagery as a key part of its storytelling, except it goes even further and takes the violence to ridiculous levels. Its violence can be almost cartoonishly extreme, while it often drifts into the outright supernatural or uncanny. It can be sort of ridiculous and frequently very funny, but, beneath the absurdity, there is often a seriousness to the sound.
If the violence within gangsta rap reflects the real-life violence that young Black people too often experience in the cities of America, horrorcore takes things a little bit further. The imagery it depicts is often way beyond the realms of reality, but its paranoia is itself gesturing towards a truth about American society. Racism and state violence can make people lose their minds.
Horrorcore’s greatest artists never hit the mainstream, exactly, but the subgenre did have bearing upon some who did. Eminem, in his wild, early work, certainly drew on horrorcore’s violent story-telling techniques, while even Nas’ Illmatic arguably was shaped by it, too. Horrorcore is as much a part of hip-hop as any of its other subgeneres, and it’s even made something of a comeback in recent years. All of which is to say, it’s worth a look at some of its best and most notable works.
The five best horrorcore albums of all time:
5. Insane Clown Posse – The Amazing Jeckel Brothers
Insane Clown Posse, or ICP, are a divisive group. They are, for lots of people, frankly intolerable, with plenty of critics taking that particular view. But to their fans, their horrorcore style and the elaborate nature of their gigs is something to worship. The most die-hard of the group’s admirers call themselves “Juggalos,” and they go to gigs dressed as clowns—complete with full face paint. This is the sort of excitable loyalty that only a select few artists are ever able to achieve, so, clearly, despite so much wider distaste for the group, ICP has done something right.
ICP tell a coherent story throughout their albums, which together form a series known as The Dark Carnival. This “dark carnival” is a place where souls are sent to face judgement, and the idea was apparently inspired by a dream that group member Violent J once had. It’s a very high concept, but the group’s fifth album, 1999’s The Amazing Jeckel Brothers, nonetheless managed to attract hip-hop royalty in the form of Snoop Dogg and Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who both featured on it. The album isn’t for everybody—nor are ICP themselves, for that matter—but it certainly forms a core part of horrorcore history.
4. Three-6 Mafia – Mystic Stylez
Released in 1995, Three 6 Mafia’s first-ever studio album, Mystic Stylez, helped to define all horrorcore that came after it. Extreme violence, murder, drug use, Satanism and the occult—all the typical thematic tropes of the subgenre were in there, as was horrorcore’s jet-black, creepy sound. This was dark music, and it helped to shape an entire subculture of hip-hop. But, unfortunately, the group could be a little bit too protective of their sound, which led them to feud with a major group that was also dipping into the darkness at the time: Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.
Three 6 Mafia felt that Bone Thugs-n-Harmony had copied their style on their early horror-inflected single ‘Thuggish Ruggish Bon,’ going so far as to respond with a diss track ‘Live by Yo Rep,’ which featured on Mystic Stylez. But, over time, the Three-6 Mafia members mellowed out. Founding member DJ Paul told HipHopDX in 2015, “It wasn’t a real beef… When they came out with ‘Thuggish Ruggish Bone’ and all of that stuff and we hear somebody kind of on our same style: Faces of Death, redrum, murder, 6-6-6, tongue twisting. We were like, ‘Damn these dudes done stole our style!’ [Laughs] That’s why we got mad about it.”
3. .clipping – Visions of Bodies Being Burned
In 2020, the LA experimental hip-hop group .clipping released their fourth album, Visions of Bodies Being Burned, which was a direct follow-up to 2019’s There Existed an Addiction to Blood. Both of these records were straight-up horrorcore for the 21st century, but Visions happened to arrive in October 2020—during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Trump sat in the White House and the Black Lives Matter protests were at their height. Death and the spectre of state violence were firmly in the air, which made the horror of .clipping’s new album feel incredibly pertinent. But, as group member William Hutson noted on KTSW radio, they never could have planned for that.
“If people listening to this think that there’s something about horrorcore and our relationship to the way we deal with horror and monstrosity in the record that seems fitting for the time, that’s just kinda lucky for us,” he admitted. “Because this was already planned, the earliest song on these two records was completed in 2014, and we just sat on it and built around it since then. These two records have been in the works for a long time, and maybe the newer songs are responding a little bit more to the nightmarish scenario that the world and particularly the United States has become, but we were gonna do this anyway.”
2. Flatlinerz – USA
Flatlinerz’ first and only album, USA—that is, “Under Satan’s Authority”—was released in 1994 by Def Jam Recordings, which, during that period, was looking to push an alternative to gangsta rap. The label thought it had found its answer with Flatlinerz, who were making horrorcore before the subgenre had truly cohered and been labelled as such. But all the tropes were there, the dark sounds and lyrics, and the music videos for USA’s singles ‘Live Evil,’ ‘Satanic Verses’ and ‘Rivaz of Red’ all featured really gruesome shots. But the extremity of the horror backfired commercially. The videos were deemed too extreme, so they barely got any play on music TV channels, while the album itself sold poorly, shifting only 36,000 copies.
The group ended up being dropped by Def Jam, and they never released another album, although they did release a trilogy of EPs between 2016 and 2018. As for why they weren’t popular at the start during the ’90s, member Redrum is of the opinion that it came down to the broad religiosity of the group’s target audience. “Black people are a bit more religious and are not accepting of any occult topic,” he told The Village Voice in 2014. “The main problem was people were scared to death they would go to hell.”
1. Gravediggaz – 6 Feet Deep
Not only were Gravediggaz one of the first ever rap supergroups, but they were also pioneers of horrorcore, demonstrating what the subgenre could be at its very best. The group, made up of Prince Paul, Stetsasonic, Too Poetic and, most famously, RZA, produced extremely dark, bloody hip-hop, but never without retaining a sense of humour and a serious critique of the racism and violence of American society. But, despite its brilliance, their debut album, 6 Feet Deep never quite received the support in its own time that it probably warranted.
Prince Paul, who once spoke to HipHopSite.com about the record, believed the timing was just wrong. “The thing is,” he said, “[6 Feet Deep] came out just at the time when Craig Mack and Biggie Smalls came in. So we were doing one thing, but that other type of sound started popping. So when people looked at us like, ‘Gravediggaz? Ahh man, this is a gimmick!’ we kinda got swept under the rug… which kinda hurt my feelings because I really worked hard on that album. I think if it came out like two years earlier it would have been a big record.”