Tearing into Gnarls Barkley

Posted by Maximum Fun on 25th April 2006


I love Cee-Lo, and have since the Goodie Mobb days. His appearances on the Dungeon Family album outshone Big Boi and Andre, and his solo albums, while uneven, had given me hope he might just have a truly great record in him.

Apparently that record is NOT Gnarly Barkley, his collaboration with producer Danger Mouse.

And why would it be? Who is Danger Mouse, anyway? Did anyone actually hear The Grey Album? It wasn’t very good. It was certainly no White Albulum, I’ll tell you that much right now. It was the sort of record that people who don’t actually like hip-hop buy, so they can talk about how they like “some hip-hop, like Jurassic 5.”

My suspicions about this new project seem to be becoming real… noz writes over at Posse on Blogway:

Non rap listeners and critics eat this garbage up because they’ve just been waiting for a project from a rapper that would prove that they are not narrow-minded, but isn’t so rappy. These people are the worst types of music listeners in the world and need to just own up to being square ass square butts (or racists) who can’t fuck with rap already. They are no doubt very impressed that a rapper was able to have such wide lense musical perspective to not only know, but to cover a Violent Femmes song, as Gnarls Barkley does. Odds are these are that people lack the perspective to realize that there is a reason that nobody remembers any Violent Femmes, except for that one song.

Noz’ piece is very illuminating. You should read it.