Gnarls Barkley’s Cee-Lo Reflects

Did you and Danger Mouse form Gnarls Barkley to be an ongoing group rather than a one-off project?

Cee-Lo: It wasn’t that initially, so in that sense [debut LP St. Elsewhere] was a concept record. But this might be one of the most organic pieces of work I’ve ever done. We thought other cool people would get into it, and that would be it. It’s surpassed both our expectations. But now, with what it’s become, we’d like to see what we could do if we really, really focused.

Where did you come up with the name, anyway?

Cee-Lo: Gnarls Barkley began as joking around. It’s not a very big deal at this point; I guess the most we talked about it was that a peculiar, unique sound deserves a peculiar, unique name.

One gets the sense that the two of you operate with an “anything goes” kind of philosophy.

Cee-Lo: Well, yeah. When I set out to do music, I definitely don’t perpetuate parameters at all. If there are some, I guess I could make amends with them, but as far as anything else is concerned, I would much rather have wide-open spaces.

How do the two of you collaborate to create music?

Cee-Lo: It’s a duet, so to speak, because the production makes a statement itself. I’m inspired by the production—the sound, the texture, the sentiment of the records. It really did inspire me to be very reflective and introspective and it just really compelled quite a few emotions from me. That’s basically the core. It’s honest. It’s not conceptualized or contrived at all. We don’t really talk about music; we more or less talked to each other about each other and music in general in hopes to just contribute what we could.

Were the two of you aware of how many other artists were covering “Crazy” after it came out?

Cee-Lo: Kind of. I heard Kanye did it. I heard the Raconteurs did it and I love Jack White, so I’m very flattered about that. I heard about Nelly and all sorts of other folks so… I’m glad that it’s everybody’s song, because it was too much to just be mine, you know what I’m saying?

Gnarls Barkley’s latest release, The Odd Couple, is out now.

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This entry was posted by RNYK on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 3:45 pm