After the sound of a film projector whirring to life and a little hip-hop fanfare, this album starts with "Go Go Gadget Gospel" glee: soul horns kicking, hand-clapping breakbeats with the speed and stutter of jungle, and Cee-Lo Green shouting, "I'm free" like he's up in church. It's the most exciting thing I've heard this year. At the tail end of the disc, there's "The Last Time", where the beat splits the difference between disco-era funk and roller-skating jam, and Cee-Lo sings like he borrowed some time-traveling platform shoes from the Delfonics' closet and wound up on mid-1970s Soul Train. You shouldn't fixate on those details-- I may be exaggerating-- but the main thing about those two tracks are that they sound awfully fresh. Play this when people are over and they'll almost certainly ask the question: "So who is this, anyway?"
I don't mean to spin any big theories on you-- this isn't that kind of record-- but let's stop for a second and notice the context. Now that hip-hop has nearly three decades under its belt, every major genre of American pop music is more or less "mature." You know how rock geeks, after nine or 10 years immersed in the genre, start looking elsewhere for surprises-- hip-hop, dance, bluegrass, anything they haven't already figured out? Well, these days we can read Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee telling Tape Op that rap is all repetitive big business now, and claiming that alternative rock is where the innovation is-- in other words, sounding not unlike an old rock guy wondering why bands still sound like the Velvet Underground. This kind of uneasiness isn't new, of course, but it's interesting: It seems like there's a big itch out there right now, everyone looking for ways to make the music feel as new and free as it did when they first came across it.
Two guys interested in scratching that itch, hip-hop-wise, are both associates in Atlanta's Dungeon Family. Andre 3000, of Outkast: It might seem like he's just trying to be weird, but the guy has spent the last decade visibly searching for some new way to be-- not just new music, but a whole new model of identity for the black male musician. (Avenues he's tried include futurism, mysticism, Baduism, sincerity, dandified couture, genre-less chart hits, and close study of Aphex Twin.) The same goes for Cee-Lo, one half of the Gnarls Barkley duo-- a Goodie Mob rapper turned funk freak and soul-shouting faux preacherman.
Who does Gnarls Barkley pair him with, the two of them dressed up like Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange droogs, or Wayne and Garth? DJ Danger Mouse, a guy known by undie-rap geeks for his own beats but read-about-in-Entertainment Weekly for mashing up Jay-Z and the Beatles. The two of them: They're trying something new here, you know. Even the lyrical themes of this album-- madness, depression, monsters, visionaries, being yourself-- seem like conscious attempts to be arty. And that's before you get to the tossed-off Violent Femmes cover. Which is only track four.
Don't get me wrong: This is not some grand genre-busting mission statement. For the most part, it sounds like two guys playing around and having fun, sometimes more fun than the listener. DM's production aesthetic-- "if it's enjoyable for more than 2 minutes and 10 seconds, then that's the song to me"-- means the beats come out like candies in a box, a line of little treats and mini-ideas. (Pick some samples, make them bump a little, move on.) Cee-Lo sounds like he's writing in the vocal booth, just hopping in and singing his takes until something good develops. But as scattershot and weirdly limp as parts of this are-- two guys just knocking things together, seeing what happens-- well, it feels better to hear someone trying.
And the treats are real treats. The single, "Crazy", has been found atop UK charts (and on U.S. television dramas), for all the same reasons that Outkast's "Hey Ya" hit big-- it's a big, brash pop song that sounds retro and modern at the same time. "Transformer" is a tweaked-out jumble with the pace and clatter of English grime, plus flutes. There's traditional r&b; bump, "cinematic" darkness for the monster stories, DM's dusty-sample boom-bap. "Just a Thought" has Cee-Lo experiencing crisis over classical guitar and bursts of overdriven drums: "I've tried/ Everything but suicide/ And it's crossed my mind/ But I'm fine."
Imagine: Two guys fooling around with whatever sticks, musically, and yet here's Cee-Lo, sounding as convincing as possible in his best reverend soul-voice, writing serious and sincere about life. It's a joy, and in this context, where unselfconscious freshness can feel strangely hard to come by, it'll charm the hell out of a whole lot of people-- whether or not it'll really stand up to more than a season's listening.
