by CeeLo Green
My biggest records have been psychological. I think that if I had stayed in school, I might have earned my masters in psychology, sociology, and maybe some other ’ologies too. Instead, music has given me some sanity and the most meaningful education of my life. I don’t have a high school diploma. I have music—and it has educated me thoroughly. In music, I found my college, and my church too. Because I am so headstrong, and music is so personal and means so much to me, it is hard for me to be contained by any group for too long. Even one as willfully strange as Gnarls Barkley.
Once again in my creative life, I felt a familiar desire to move on. I felt like there was someone trying to hold me, or define me or tell me what I can or cannot do, and I just resented it. I think Danger Mouse’s thing was to always protect the integrity of the project, so he didn’t want anyone else to use me. I think he thought I was almost like a tortured little child, or someone’s boy. Finally, I was like, stop. Enough. I am my own man.
Did I like Danger Mouse? Yeah, he’s a funny guy and we had a lot of creative fun taking on the world together, and I hope we will again. But I will always demand R-E-S-P-E-C.T. This is still the music business, and I can be a team player, but I am a power forward on any team that has me. I will score. I will help you win. So if you want to assist me, then that’s what you should be doing if you want to win too. Just don’t stop me from playing my position and doing my thing. This is what so often breaks up teams, groups, and marriages.
If you want to be on my team, why would you assume I don’t know my own position? I know I’m a strong power forward. I can’t be the whole team, but I know what I’m doing on my court and I love doing it too. If I had been as quiet in front of the microphone as Danger Mouse was behind the keyboard, would Gnarls Barkley have had the same massive global impact? No way. For all of Brian’s musical genius, I ended up having to sell a lot of Gnarls Barkley on my own personality because I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anyone talking—or singing—but me.
Despite all of the tensions that were brewing, there was never a huge fight between us, and there still hasn’t been. So I’m taking a note from Danger Mouse here because I know how honest he would be in his book, if and when he writes one. But eventually all of these tensions ate away at Gnarls Barkley as the duo. Personally, I like a little tension, but I think ultimately, Brian wanted even more control than I could give him or anybody. As I saw it, Danger Mouse became preoccupied with the perception of control. I feel like he got a little kick out of people thinking that he was Dr. Frankenstein and I was his performing monster. Hey, I suppose if that’s what you get off on man, go for it. But I don’t care about those kinds of games. In the end, I am nobody’s monster but my own.
One of the upsides of tasting big success with Gnarls Barkley was that it brought me back together with Big Gipp and Goodie Mob in a big way. After years of just talking occasionally, our friendship began all over again. For all we’d been through since I stepped away from Goodie Mob, I always knew Gipp was my mutant brother in arms, and eventually, my brother came back into my life right when were both having a moment in the sun. It happened when we ran into each other backstage at the BMI Awards show in New York in 2006. I’ll let Gipp fill you in on the details, but it led to a big thaw between me and the Mob. Before long we were back in each other’s lives again, like brothers are meant to be.
Big Gipp: CeeLo and me had been talking the whole time during the Goodie Mob breakup, but no one else knew about it. Still, we really started getting our brotherhood back together at the BMI Awards. CeeLo had gotten a number 1 that year and so did I—Lo had “Crazy” with Gnarls Barkley go number 1 and I had “Grillz” by Nelly, which I was featured on, go to number 1 too. That night at the BMI Awards was first time we were in the room with our different crews, and when we saw each other across the room we attended to each other like we weren’t even there with anybody. That was like our big reunion scene in this love story between two straight dudes. I remember CeeLo left Danger Mouse, and I left Nelly and that whole crew on the side. And we played around and joked around together like no time had passed at all. We both congratulated each other for being back on the top and for somehow getting there on our own crazy terms. And we both were in the same position. Lo was in a group, but Danger Mouse sort of ran that situation—or at least he thought he did. I was working with a group with Ali from St. Lunatics, but Nelly ran that situation. But still, one way or another, we had gotten back to number 1, and from that moment on, we were back in each other’s lives too. That was a big moment for both of us. After that, the mood changed.
Goodie Mob showed up at a Gnarls Barkley show in Atlanta. Then when I was on the road with Nelly, and we had a show at the Tabernacle in Atlanta with Nelly and CeeLo came by to say hello. Nelly said to CeeLo, “Yo, Lo, you want to come up and perform tonight?” The other two Goodie Mobs guys were there and they were good to go. And CeeLo did it—and that was the first time we’d really gotten together onstage together in like years. That night was a great sensation. It was also CeeLo’s chance to see the other possibilities of Goodie Mob being back together. Remember, this was not CeeLo’s crowd or Goodie Mob’s crowd—this was Nelly’s crowd, and we won them over. We did “Black Ice” and “They Don’t Dance No Mo,” and that’s when we first started testing the waters. So we started testing the waters again. We ended up doing twenty dates together, and that’s when the campaign to do Goodie Mob really began. It was great to get to know each other again and see that we can still be friends and work together.
It was truly great to be hanging with the Mob again. For all the people you meet and work with in this business, it’s important to surround yourself with those who you trust really have your back. Because if you think life gets easy when you taste a little success, please think again. In fact, finding my next big hit would be another long strange trip with, I confess, a very happy ending. For reasons that not even I can explain, we ended up spending basically three years and recording something like seventy songs to make my next album, The Lady Killer. Even if you are not already born crazy, which most of us are, the modern music business can definitely make you that way.
CHAPTER NINE
How to Make Friends and Influence People by Singing “Fuck You”
Yeah I’m sorry, I can’t afford a Ferrari
But that don’t mean I can’t get you there.
I guess he’s an Xbox and I’m more Atari,
But the way you play, your game ain’t fair.
—Christopher “Brody” Brown, Bruno Mars, CeeLo Green, Philip Lawrence, and Ari Levine, “Fuck You”
TWO OF A KIND
Making a little Grammy history with Gwyneth Paltrow in 2011 is a moment I will never forget. Aren’t we pretty together?
Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Even though Christine and I were divorced, we were still a family, and I still took my responsibilities to provide for her, Kingston, and the girls seriously. Yes, things got tough, but somehow we got through. For a while there wasn’t always a lot of money in the bank, but there was food on the table. Still, I believed in myself—even if that was sometimes a minority opinion. A couple years of later, after “Crazy” came out and blew down any walls of resistance surrounding me, the same record company that didn’t believe in me suddenly could not wait to get busy marketing me even though I wasn’t with them anymore. They rushed into action and put together songs from those two solo albums and a couple Goodie Mob tracks and in 2009 released a kind of CeeLo’s Greatest Non-Hits collection on me called Closet Freak: The Best of Cee-Lo Green the Soul Machine. I didn’t like that. The label didn’t see much worth in that music before I left, so why all the love now? The answer—as it usually is in the music business—is all about money.
What really ticked me off is that Arista didn’t even ask me to go back and digitally remaster and improve things on the tracks. There were so many things I could have done better by then. I listen to old stuff and it sounds… old, because you’re always w
orking with the technology you had at the time. To me, the past is just a moment in time. I am infinitely more interested in the possibilities of now. Yes, I still remember almost everything that happened, but I don’t like nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. This is because no matter what comes my way in this life, I am still my mother’s son.
But in the end I have to thank Arista and all the record label executives who’ve tried to cajole me and control me over the years, because they became a big part of the inspiration for a charming little song that was about to make history.
By 2010, I had already been a big part of some monster recordings known all around the world, but none of those tracks was a massive hit under my own name. So leave it to not so little me to finally make my own biggest and boldest impression yet by telling absolutely everyone in the world “Fuck You” and still having the world love me for it.
Despite what the song’s lyrics might suggest, I wasn’t just mad at any one girl. No, I was mad at a whole music business that in my mind had become way too contrived—more a destroyer of art instead of a platform for great artists. The way I saw it, the music business was getting increasingly soulless when great music should be all about soul. “Fuck You” was—for my part at least—a way of expressing blatant outright disrespect for the way things work in the music business and at the very same time getting paid loads of money for declaring that truth out loud.
In a much larger sense, “Fuck You” was another anthem that I put out into the stratosphere for all of life’s underdogs. I was born an outsider, and the way I see it, I will never truly get on the inside. So even when things break my way, and I walk right up to the edge and stand surrounding the circumference of the inner circle looking in at all the beautiful people, I still know in my heart of hearts that I do not actually belong there.
To this very day, I feel like a lot of the powers that be in this world do not like me because I do not play by their rules and never have. So instead, I am the guy flipping the bird and shouting “Fuck You.” In a million different ways in my life, I feel as if the music business has said to me, “We really don’t understand people like you. You seem to have talent, but you don’t fit into our picture.” And time and time again, I try to explain to the beautiful people that whether they recognize it or not, we live in a world that is full of mutants. We who survive and overcome all obstacles even when we get dirty looks and don’t get invited to the cool parties. The way that I see it, a singer like me only has two ways to get scratched by the masses: You can beg for attention or you can bite for it. Personally, I am a dog who is far too proud to beg.
So before “Fuck You,” I just continued to stand my own ground and do my own thing. Having stepped away from Gnarls Barkley, I spent what felt like years trying to come up with the right record to get Atlantic excited about my next solo album. The music industry was changing dramatically now, and suddenly it seemed like the label was afraid to put anything out for fear that it might fail. As a true artist, I have never worked that way. In my heart, I am not interested in trying to blend in and just have a hit—any hit.
Big Gipp: The attitude of CeeLo’s record company at the time was like “Okay, you’re Mr. Gnarls Barkley, and you had that big hit, so here’s your big record deal now give us another one of those ‘Crazy’ things.” But CeeLo didn’t have another “Crazy” in his back pocket, and that’s not what he wanted to do anyway. So Atlantic was like “So maybe you do need Danger Mouse?” CeeLo’s attitude as always was to stand his ground. He said, “No, I just need to do what I do.” Lo was waiting on the right record as impactful as “Crazy,” but just like that song, it had to be another great record that came totally out of left field. You just can’t rush a classic. Like the Lord himself, CeeLo works in mysterious ways that work only for him. The man doesn’t go by anyone else’s guidelines or schedule. So for something like three years, it felt like CeeLo was making lots of records just for himself. CeeLo will wait on greatness, but record companies feel like time is money. But when record companies begin to doubt CeeLo, CeeLo just smiles more. He’s very strategic that way. He just thinks it’s funny when people underestimate him.
The weirdness for a moment or two between Bruno Mars and CeeLo only comes from the way the music business works today—or to be honest, kind of works today. There’s a huge rush to come in and take credit for anything that works—because so little does work. There was some competition there because of that, but it’s cool. We showed up in the studio and when we first came in they were like, “We have an idea for a song called ‘Fuck You.’ ” They had that part. CeeLo walked outside and he said, “Gipp, I don’t know if this shit will work. I can think of a million reasons and places it won’t work, but I like it anyway. I told CeeLo, “This record is what a lot of people are going through. They’re pissed and the bubble just burst and a lot of people are not happy. They’re losing their homes. They’re losing their jobs. And they’re losing their relationships. I think this record could capture the core of what people are feeling out there right now.” CeeLo said okay, and they started to change some words and flesh out the song. Lo got to the third verse and he just freestyled that whole “WHY” bit, and that was a turning point in his head. That’s when he started to say, this record is funny. When they finished the record, I knew it was a smash—not as big a smash as it turned out to be, but I knew it was going to be plenty big. Because “Crazy” and “Fuck You” in my mind were kind of like great Goodie Mob records. It was CeeLo really saying something and going against the grain. There’s a little bit of pop America that wants a taste of real life and not another song about partying in the club. But I think you needed a true messenger like CeeLo to deliver those kinds of left-field messages. No disrespect, but “Fuck You” would not have become what it became if it was sung by Bruno Mars or by anyone else in the solar system. There are songs only CeeLo could sell to the world. People believed CeeLo when he said, “Fuck You.” He has to believe what he says and what he sings. He does not do this for the money—he does it because it’s what he’s here to do. And that’s why he always wins, and as long as he keeps that attitude and that approach, I am betting that he keeps on winning.
But in the end—after all the industrial overthinking and music biz double-talk—it all usually comes down to one great song, that one undeniable song that explodes and leaves a mark that’s powerful and permanent. “Fuck You” was—and is—one of those songs.
For the record, all our foul-mouthed fun began when our A&R man at Atlantic told me one day about a couple of staff writers who might be worth meeting. And that’s how I was introduced to the very talented man the world now knows as Bruno Mars and his musical partner, Phil Lawrence. This is not to insult them—that’s just who they were to me at that point because this was still early on in their journey. Today the Smeezingtons—Bruno, Phil, and their musical partner Ari Levine—are well-known and respected hit-makers, not just for Bruno himself but for lots others artists too, but back when we first met, their reputation was still just developing.
I was told that these young guys were very talented and that if I didn’t mind, it would be good to open up a little creative space with them and bounce around some ideas. In this business, you meet a whole lot of people. Some professional relationships go nowhere fast—others will change your life—so it usually pays to keep an open mind. The word was that these would be good guys to get to know, and in this case at least, the word turned out to be right.
At the time, I was feeling creatively frustrated and open to trying anything different to get some different results. So Phil and Bruno came over to the place I was working, Nightbird Studios at the famous Sunset Marquis Hotel in LA. We all chatted for a while. I was working on a track at the time and they were being accommodating to me on this particular occasion and added some little background parts. Unfortunately, at some point that night, all the small talk became awkward for me, so I pulled the sort of disappearing act that I sometimes do when I get uncomfortable. I to
ld Bruno and Phil that I was going to the restroom, and I just never came back.
So the chemistry wasn’t exactly instant between us. In music as in love, you don’t always experience love at first sight. Sometimes it takes a second coming. Eventually—despite my admittedly rude brush-off on our first writing date—we got back together, and the next time we really hit it off. It helped that these two guys Bruno Mars and Phil Lawrence turned out to be so much fun, and I have a fully functioning sense of humor too. As a result, the second time around, the three us talked and laughed and cracked jokes and got along like a trio of crazy frat brothers in a house on fire. And things suddenly became very productive.
People probably do not realize it, but “The Way You Are”—which later became a big smash for Bruno—was written for me. The song “Dr. Feelgood” that Travie McCoy ended up doing was my song initially too. And “The Other Side” that featured me with B.o.B. was originally going to be my song as well. So to their credit, these ambitious young guys were really pitching and trying to find something that truly fit me. I also learned that like most good artists, Bruno had already been through battles of his own. Like me, Bruno was an underdog with attitude who had to reinvent himself to make it big. Do you think it’s easy for a little Filipino dude born Peter Gene Hernandez from Honolulu to take over the world? If so, think again. Even though Bruno was still a young dude, he’d already been through the ringer himself, including getting a record deal with Motown when he was only eighteen that ended in total frustration and with Bruno getting dropped. In the end, of course, talent wins out, and that would prove to be Motown’s very big loss.