A casual observer might know Atlanta-born CeeLo Green as the rotund soul man who struck commercial gold twice in the last decade, as half of Gnarls Barkley, and then with his own “Fuck You!” in 2010. But the 39-year-old has a long and rich musical life aside from these projects, including most of the 1990s with the rap group Goodie Mob, part of the Dungeon Family collective which also includes the world-conquering Outkast as members and was instrumental in the rise to dominance of the Southern States in the hip hop world.
This is Goodie Mob's first album in eight years and their first since 1999 with CeeLo, and it certainly sounds like it wants to be an event album. From the very beginning it is full of high drama, some incredible musicianship, Janelle Monae guest spots, frenzied electronic weirdness and what sounds like a whole lot of pent-up emotional expression in the vocals – as well as as much anger about the state of the world as that brilliant/awful punning title references. This is no straight-up beats-and-rhymes rap album; these are masters of the studio and the microphone building what feels like a war machine, with everything including strings, horns and very possibly the kitchen sink locked together to create maximum impact all the time.
In a similar sense to some of Kanye West's recent records, it's like a prog rock album – overblown, barmy, full of brilliance, and kind of hard work. Is that a bad thing, though? It entirely depends if you have the patience to ride out the highs and lows, unpick the tangles and work out what the hell it's all about. If you do there's quite a lot to love here and even more to admire, and it's rather nice to know that people are still constructing albums this wildly ambitious when consumers' attention spans were supposed to have dissolved into grey goo a long time ago.
Overleaf: watch the video for "Special Education" with Janelle Monae
