USA TODAY International Edition
After 14 years, Goodie Mob builds a well- oiled ‘ Machine’
Reuniting for album was ‘ second nature,’ CeeLo Green says
Age Against the Machine, Goodie Mob’s first album in 14 years, was slow in coming because “amazing is a process,” says CeeLo Green, the hiphop act’s youngest member and breakout star. “A quest for quality is my mission in life.”
Green, 39, is better known these days for the 2006 smash Crazy with Gnarls Barkley, the 2010 solo hit For
get You ( and its explicit version) and as a coach on The Voice.
But he was eager to reactivate Mob “before the world writes us off.”
In 1991, Goodie Mob sprang from Atlanta’s Southern rap collective Dungeon Family, which also birthed Outkast. Green, Big Gipp, Khujo and T- Mo released the 1995 debut Soul
Food to raves, then two titles in 1998 and 1999 ( plus one in 2004 without Green).
The Gnarls collaboration suspended an earlier reunion, and Mob didn’t dig in until after Green completed the 2010 solo disc The Lady Killer.
“I did realize at some point that we had been poised for a purpose,” he says. Despite the hiatus, “there’s a seamlessness that is second nature and second skin. We’ve known each other all our lives. I can speak my deepest darkest truth because I have company in that mystery and camaraderie in that conflict.”
Machine ( out today) has impressed critics. As it should, says Green, its producer and arranger.
“I know it’s exceptional,” he says. “Quality is imperative. Quartets are almost non- existent in hip- hop. Our collective understanding was to consolidate who we are and invest that energy back into us. We are earth, wind, fire and water.”
As before, Mob pushes boundaries. Power looks at Green’s crossover success in terms of gaining white power. Amy examines his first romance with a white woman. Janelle Monae joins the anti- bullying Special Education.
“I don’t want to do black music or hip- hop. We have to be bigger than black. I want to do great music.” CeeLo Green
“I had a clear vision,” Green says. “We didn’t want scattered gunfire. We wanted master marksmanship. We definitely stretched. The time and tenacity invested is a testament to our elasticity. We are truly the rubber band.”
Green is aiming for a broad audience. “I don’t want to do black music or hip- hop,” he says. “We have to be bigger than black. I want to do great music.”
Green predicts that Machine will enjoy critical and commercial success, but the latter may be a long shot.
The promo single Fight to Win premiered in April on The Voice “and didn’t set the world on fire,” says Keith Caulfield, Billboard‘ s associate director of charts/ retail. “If there was real excitement, it would have charted and radio would have played it. They were certainly significant in the late 1990s, but they’ve got some work to do to inform the public about who Goodie Mob is.”
Green unveils himself in an autobiography, Everybody’s Brother: My Story, due Sept. 10. He returns to The Voice Sept. 23. And he’s working on the next Gnarls Barkley project and a solo album, Girl Power, expected in December.”
His solo career won’t shelve Goodie Mob for another 14 years.
“We’re 25% into the next album,” he says. “And it’s amazing.”