It took the Atlanta hip-hop chemists in OutKast five albums to record 2003’s hit single “Hey Ya!” and hijack both the rhythm of the public consciousness and the Billboard Hot 100. The following year, OutKast became the first hip-hop act to win Grammy awards for Album of the Year and Best Rap Album on the strength of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, a two-disc album that ran the gamut from rim-spinning bass wreckage to oddball pop ditties. The public perception of what a hip-hop act could sound like—and, thanks to OutKast’s GQ-ready emcee André Benjamin, look like —changed drastically.
On one hand, this partially explains the public reception of Gnarls Barkley. On the other hand, there’s a big gap between accepting Gnarls masterminds Cee-Lo Green and Brian Burton and understanding who they are, or what it is, exactly, they’re doing.
Since his early involvement in rap ensemble Goodie Mob, Green has produced at least one spectacular modern soul album (2004’s …is the Soul Machine) and a dozen identities, among them “Dracu-Lo,” “Cookie Monster” and “Car Belly.” Burton, now one of the most sought-after producers in pop music, first made his name as “DJ Danger Mouse,” cutting and pasting Jay-Z’s Black Album with the Beatles’ White Album to make The Grey Album. Since 2006’s “Crazy”—not as instantly gripping as “Hey Ya!” but with a longer shelf life—the duo has been photographed wearing costumes from Star Wars, Back to the Future, Donnie Darko and Wayne’s World. Does that make them craaa-zaaay?
No, but the pressure falls on the duo’s latest, The Odd Couple, to provide the group with an identity. And Green does his best to do the work himself, albeit on the last track of the record, “A Little Better.” “The circumstances put soul in me/ And there ain’t no holdin’ me./ I’ve got a heart made of gold in me.” Two out of three ain’t bad: Green still sounds like a mix between D’Angelo’s rasp and Al Green’s gospel-fringed jams, and he’s a veritable Winnie the Pooh of pop, down on himself to the point of huggability. Lead single “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul?” is every bit the skewed soul song as Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” and “Run (I’m a Natural Disaster)” sounds like Martha and the Vandellas’ “Nowhere To Run” performed by the superfly Curtis Mayfield. If “Lo-rilla” is after an identity, it appears to be Holland-Dozier-Holland and the Motown Sound.
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The success of Gnarls Barkley as a pop act, however, relies more on DJ Danger Mouse than Green. And while most of his backbeats are soaked in just the sort of organ sounds, snare drums and samples to put Gnarls in charge of a “Soul Train” revival or a Tarantino soundtrack, a few—the irregular heartbeats of “Open Book” and “She Knows”—entirely mask the group’s intentions, melodic or otherwise.
Gnarls Barkley may never make the sort of music that adapts well to a live setting; more than a few folks that saw the duo open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the John Paul Jones Arena were disappointed in the flatness of the performance. Yet 80 percent of the tunes Burton turns out are headphone masterpieces, and the Lo-rilla elevates each one with a preacher’s soul and self-assurance. The Odd Couple may still fit the group’s identity—pop culture costume and genre tag in one—but Gnarls Barkley isn’t as odd as Green and Burton believe.
