Who is Thomas DeCarlo Callaway . The music and entertainment world knows him as Cee Lo or Gnarls Barkley. Barkley is a musical group collaboration between multi-instrumentalist, DJ and producer Danger Mouse from New York, and rapper/vocalist Cee Lo Green, from Atlanta.
He originally came to prominence as a member of the southern hip-hop group Goodie Mob, later launching a critically acclaimed solo career[2] and forming Gnarls Barkley with DJ/producerDanger Mouse.
Among Cee Lo's hits are the singles "Closet Freak";
"I'll Be Around",
"Crazy" (by Gnarls Barkley); and
"Fuck You"
Cee Lo was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and attended Benjamin E. Mays High School in southwest Atlanta. Both of his parents were ordained ministers and he started his music career in his church. His father died when he was 2 years old. His mother Sheila J. Tyler-Callaway was involved in a car crash, leaving her paralyzed, of which she died two years after the accident. At the time, Cee Lo was 18-years old and his career with Goodie Mob had just begun taking off. Their mother's death led Cee Lo into depression, as is reflected in various songs throughout his career, including "Free" by Goodie Mob, songs on St. Elsewhere, and on The Odd Couple ("She Knows", "A Little Better").[3][4] Cee Lo also expresses his love for his mother in the song "Guess Who" from Goodie Mob's Soul Food album.Cee Lo has described himself as being a "goon" in his youth. He would later call this behaviour 
maniacal.[5] Cee-Lo was married to Christina Johnson until they divorced in 2005. Together they have a son Kingston; and Cee Lo is a stepfather to Christina's daughters, Sierra and Kalah. Sierra was on a season 1 episode of MTV's My Super Sweet 16 as well as the follow-up MTV television series, Exiled. Kingston is featured on the intro of Cee Lo Green... Is the Soul Machine. In 2010, at age 35, Cee Lo became a step-grandfather when his 20-year-old stepdaughter Sierra had a son.[6]Along with Big Gipp, T-Mo, and Khujo, Cee-Lo was an original member of the Atlanta hip-hop group Goodie Mob. He is the youngest of the four.[1] During the making of the album World Party
, Cee-Lo left the group to pursue a solo career under Arista and the remaining members continued to perform together under the Goodie Mob name with Koch Records. They did however collaborate in combinations in the Dungeon Family album Even in Darkness. Although the next Goodie Mob album seemed to mock Cee-Lo with its title, One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, the group expressed that it was more of a jab at Arista and the music industry as a whole.In 2005, Cee-Lo and Big Gipp were both noted in interview. No title or release date have been given for the new project. The song "Hold On" from Big Boi of OutKast's Got Purp? Vol 2 album was the first newly recorded Goodie Mob song with all four members since World Party. (Khujo later revealed to fans at an album signing for his new album "Mercury", that the song "Hold On" was originally recorded in 1995 beforeSoul Food was released.)
Danger Mouse has produced albums for a number of hip hop and rock artists, including Gorillaz' album Demon Days. He received international attention for his mash-up Grey Album, which blended the acapella edition of Jay-Z's The Black Album with samples from The Beatles' White Album.
The two men first met while Cee Lo was on a tour for which Danger Mouse happened to be the DJ. They became musical partners and worked together on the songs that would become the St. Elsewhere; prior to the release of that album they collaborated on the songs "What You Sittin' On?" for Lex Records in 2004, and "Benzie Box" from the Danger Doom album The Mouse and the Mask in 2005.
Who is Thomas DeCarlo Callaway . The music and entertainment world knows him as Cee Lo or Gnarls Barkley. Barkley is a musical group collaboration between multi-instrumentalist, DJ and producer Danger Mouse from New York, and rapper/vocalist Cee Lo Green, from Atlanta. He originally came to prominence as a member of the southern hip-hop group Goodie Mob, later launching a critically acclaimed solo career[2] and forming Gnarls Barkley with DJ/producerDanger Mouse.
"I'll Be Around",
"Crazy" (by Gnarls Barkley); and
"Fuck You"
Cee Lo was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and attended Benjamin E. Mays High School in southwest Atlanta. Both of his parents were ordained ministers and he started his music career in his church. His father died when he was 2 years old. His mother Sheila J. Tyler-Callaway was involved in a car crash, leaving her paralyzed, of which she died two years after the accident. At the time, Cee Lo was 18-years old and his career with Goodie Mob had just begun taking off. Their mother's death led Cee Lo into depression, as is reflected in various songs throughout his career, including "Free" by Goodie Mob, songs on St. Elsewhere, and on The Odd Couple ("She Knows", "A Little Better").[3][4] Cee Lo also expresses his love for his mother in the song "Guess Who" from Goodie Mob's Soul Food album.
maniacal.[5] Cee-Lo was married to Christina Johnson until they divorced in 2005. Together they have a son Kingston; and Cee Lo is a stepfather to Christina's daughters, Sierra and Kalah. Sierra was on a season 1 episode of MTV's My Super Sweet 16 as well as the follow-up MTV television series, Exiled. Kingston is featured on the intro of Cee Lo Green... Is the Soul Machine. In 2010, at age 35, Cee Lo became a step-grandfather when his 20-year-old stepdaughter Sierra had a son.[6]
, Cee-Lo left the group to pursue a solo career under Arista and the remaining members continued to perform together under the Goodie Mob name with Koch Records. They did however collaborate in combinations in the Dungeon Family album Even in Darkness. Although the next Goodie Mob album seemed to mock Cee-Lo with its title, One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, the group expressed that it was more of a jab at Arista and the music industry as a whole.
According to a Billboard article: "Burton and Cee Lo have been cagey about what the name of the act means, and each live performance is an opportunity to play dress-up as tennis players, astronauts and chefs, among many other get-ups. The costuming extends to photo shoots, as Burton and Cee-Lo would rather impersonate characters from such films as Back to the Future or Wayne's World.
About Gnarls Barkley, Cee Lo said in an interview: "That is that electric industrial Euro soul, that's what I call it... if I can call it anything. It truly is shapeless and formless. My style and my approach is still water, and it runs so deep. So, with that project I got a chance to be a lil' zany, of course a continuation of eccentricity, abstract and vague, and all of those wonderful things that make art exactly what it is. And that's subject to interpretation. As far as the artiste himself, it does cater to and extend the legacy of Cee-Lo Green, and showcase the diversity and range and intention of Cee-Lo Green. It is a great project that I'm very, very proud of".[3]
St. Elsewhere (2006–2007)
Downtown/Atlantic in the U.S. and Warners Bros. Records in the UK signed the band after several songs including "Crazy" were played for them by Danger Mouse's management company Waxploitation.[4] "Crazy" was released as their first single on April 3, 2006, preceded by its release as digital download and 12" vinyl record single in March 2006. It gained some of its popularity due to its use on primetime BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe's television advert, and it was also made Record of the Week by Ken Bruce of BBC Radio 2, Scott Mills and Jo Whiley of BBC Radio 1 as well as being made 'Weekend Anthem' by DJ Spoony and Sara Cox (also of Radio 1).The track is based on an Italian song named Nel cimitero di Tucson (In Tucson's cemetery) by composer Gianfranco Reverberi and is part of the soundtrack of spaghetti western Preparati la bara! (1968), starring Terence Hill.
"Crazy" is the first ever single to top the UK Singles Chart purely on download sales as it was released online a week before it was released as a CD single.[5] It is also the first single to top the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks consecutively since 1994 when Wet Wet Wet's "Love Is All Around" was number one for 15 weeks (the last song to spend exactly nine weeks on top was "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1984). It has also equaled the Queen 1975 classic "Bohemian Rhapsody", which also topped the UK singles chart for nine weeks. Gnarls Barkley announced that as the record had spent its ninth week at number one, it was to be deleted as a vinyl/CD listing from May 28, 2006, so people will "remember the song fondly and not get sick of it".[6]
"Crazy" is also the longest number-one on the UK Official Download Chart with its stay lasting eleven consecutive weeks. In late 2009 the song was voted as the best song of the decade by Rolling Stone magazine.[7]
The group released their debut album, St. Elsewhere, on April 24, 2006, in the UK and on May 9, 2006, in the U.S. For their American television debut on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, May 24, 2006, the band performed "Crazy".
They performed along with Christina Aguilera, AFI, and Wolfmother at the MTV Movie Awards 2006 on June 8, 2006.[8] They were dressed as characters from the film series Star Wars. Rebel Alliance pilots, Imperial officers, Stormtroopers, Chewbacca, Jango Fett, Obi-Wan, with Cee-Lo singing as an unmasked Darth Vader.
In October 2006, Gnarls Barkley recorded a live session for Live from Abbey Road at Abbey Road Studios.
St. Elsewhere has been certified Platinum by the RIAA for selling over 1,000,000 albums in the U.S. A limited edition deluxe package of St. Elsewhere was released on November 7, 2006. The CD+DVD package includes a 92-page booklet, four music videos and bonus songs from live performances.
From January until March 2007, they toured with the Red Hot Chili Peppers through the U.S.[9]
They did a collaborative short film in both the Spring of 2006 and 2007 with the international TV series Kung Faux which airs heavily on Channel V around the world, and they also toured Australia in March and April 2007 as part of the Channel V Festival.
The song "Go-Go Gadget Gospel" appears in the show The Boondocks. It was sung by Rev. Rollo Goodlove, who was voiced by Cee-Lo.
The Odd Couple (2008)
They appeared as the musical guest on the April 12, 2008 episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live. They were supposed to be in a Digital Short parodying amateur music videos according to the scrolled text but only appeared in the singing performances of the live broadcast.
On November 11, 2008, they released an EP, Who's Gonna Save My Soul, featuring four versions of the song which originally appeared on The Odd Couple, along with a live version of "Neighbors" and a previously unreleased song, "Mystery Man". A music video for "Mystery Man" was directed by Walter Robot and premiered on Yahoo! Music.[10]
Future
Cee Lo told CNN in September 2010 that at least one more Gnarls Barkley album is planned for the near future.[11]Cee-Lo is collaborating with producer Jazze Pha to release an album called Happy Hour on Jazze’s record label. The songs "Happy Hour" (as well as the remix with Bun B, Snoop Dogg & Tone Tone), "Man of the Hour", and "Disco Bitch" (featuring The Pussycat Dolls) from the album have already been released as singles and B-sides. Jazze Pha has produced numerous hit singles with many artists, but this project is his rapping and singing debut. Cee-Lo is co-producing the album with him, so both artist and producer share equal roles in vocals and production. Also, Melody Thornton confirmed that she is currently in the studio with Cee-Lo working on her solo album. In 2010, he recorded a song for the "Sex and the City 2" soundtrack which reached number 9 in the charts and was written by him and produced by T-Pain which is called "Language Of Love". He along with The Red Hot Chili Peppers and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder were rumored to be appearing on British DJ Paul Oakenfold's upcoming album.[19]
Cee-Lo, along with the rest of the Goodie Mob, had a cameo in the 1999 film Mystery Men as a member of the Not So Goodie Mob. He also has done voice acting work, voicing Prime Cut Miggity-Mo' Macdaddy Gizzabang Doggy Dog Dog on the Brak Show episode "Brakstreet" in 2002, Frank and Buddy Z Class of 3000's Christmas special and as Godzilla in the Robot Chicken episode "Squaw Bury Shortcake" in 2007, and Rev. Rollo Goodlove in the Boondocks episodes "The S-Word" and "The Hunger Strike" in 2008. In 2010, he appeared in T-Pain'sFreaknik: The Musical as Light Skin.On January 15, 2011, Cee-Lo both acted and performed on NBC's Saturday Night Live hosted by Gwyneth Paltrow, who, in November 2010, covered his song "Forget You" on an episode of Glee.[20]
- Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections (2002)
- Cee-Lo Green... Is the Soul Machine (2004)
- The Lady Killer (2010)
See also: Goodie Mob#Discography and Gnarls Barkley#Discography
Discography
Studio albums
| Year | Album details | Peak chart positions | Certifications (sales threshold) | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US [12] | US R&B [13] | US Elec [14] | US Indie [15] | AUS [16] | CAN [17] | CHE [18] | NZ [19] | SWE [20] | UK [21] | |||||
| 2006 | St. Elsewhere
| 4 | 4 | 1 | 28 | 6 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 9 | 1 | |||
| 2008 | The Odd Couple
| 12 | 14 | 1 | — | 20 | 21 | 16 | 20 | 59 | 18 | |||
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart | ||||||||||||||
Singles
| Year | Single | Peak chart positions | Certifications (sales threshold) | Album | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US [26] | US Adult [27] | US Alt [28] | AUS [16] | AUT [29] | CHE [18] | UK [30] | ||||||
| 2006 | "Crazy" | 2 | 1 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | St. Elsewhere | |||
| "Smiley Faces" | — | — | — | 38 | 37 | 37 | 10 | |||||
| "Who Cares?" | — | — | — | — | — | — | 60 | |||||
| "Gone Daddy Gone" | — | 35 | 26 | — | — | — | ||||||
| 2008 | "Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)" | 114 | — | 35 | — | 51 | 65 | 32 | The Odd Couple | |||
| "Going On" | 88 | — | — | — | — | — | 143 | |||||
| "Who's Gonna Save My Soul" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |||||
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart | ||||||||||||
Awards
- 2006 MTV European Music Awards, Best Song ("Crazy") and the Future Sounds Award
- 2007 Grammy Award, Best Urban/Alternative Performance ("Crazy") and Best Alternative Music Album (St. Elsewhere)[33]
- 2007 BET Award for Best Group
- 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, Best Art direction and best choreography for the video 'Run'
- 100 Best Songs of the Decade (Rolling Stone Magazine) - #1 Crazy