Everybody's Brother (16 page)

The way I saw it, producing and recording my very first solo album was my big chance to create something on my terms and strictly my own terms only. I have always been first and foremost a totally instinctive artist, not a trained one, and those creative instincts were telling me that I had to try to get somewhere new—somewhere that wasn’t anyplace I could imagine going with Goodie Mob. And as usually happens to me when I come to a fork in the road, I felt the need to take a strong left turn and find some new virgin territory for me to deflower.

In other words, it was time to start dreaming a new dream. That’s the funny thing about being a part of a
group. In the beginning, the dream is simply to become a great group. But once that first shared dream comes true, people begin to dream their own dreams, and mine was not one that I felt like sharing. I knew that my next path would have to be my own—however bumpy that road might get. And it helped that I had L.A. Reid, one of the top players in the music business, in my corner and backing me in my first heavyweight title fight. I think L.A. bet big on me because that was a time when my buddies OutKast broke through with their
Stankonia
album, and a whole cool neo-soul world seemed to be all over the airwaves. The possibilities seemed endless. In any case, it sure felt like there were great expectations riding on my broad shoulders.

With my mentor large and in charge, Arista gave me the artistic freedom to go out and produce an entire album that I heard in my head. I got the kind of liberty and the license that Prince got early in his career. That’s big, and it doesn’t happen anymore, as the music industry has declined and changed and become obsessed only with the bottom line. The fact that a weirdass album like
Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections
even exists at all represents L.A.’s investment in me and his very real support of me.

One reason why the album is called
Perfect Imperfections
is because beyond the fact that I am clearly a perfectly imperfect character, I knew that I was taking a big creative leap with the album. I took that leap willingly, knowingly, and quite happily. At the time, I didn’t realize
how crazy it was to produce myself and make the album with such an unrestrained and some might say irresponsible sense of freedom. For me, it felt right and normal to me to use the recording studio as my playground because that’s what greats like Brian Wilson, Sly Stone, and Prince had done before me.

There’s no doubt that
Perfect Imperfections
was one crazy album to make, but in my mind, it was a good kind of crazy. It may not be the best album I ever made, but it sure was a fascinating and dangerous place to start. Listening back to it today, I still love the album for its ambition, for its range, and for its utter insanity over the course of 73 minutes and 16 seconds of my distinctive musical craziness. To me,
Perfect Imperfections
sounds like the debut solo album from a very interesting guy. Okay, to be honest, it actually sounds like the debut album from a whole bunch of interesting guys with multiple personalities.

Please don’t hate me because I contain multitudes of talents. Even by my standards,
Perfect Imperfections
was a very eclectic piece of work where I got the chance to invite everyone I loved to my party—from Big Gipp to John Popper from Blues Traveler. To show you where my head was at then, the opening track, “Bad Mutha,” featured a sample from “Wounded Knee” from Primus’
Pork Soda
album. I loved Primus because they were freaks like me.

That said, I could only imagine what was going through L.A. Reid’s head when I took a good deal of money from Arista and then handed him this thoroughly
crazyass album. I’m pretty sure that when he first heard
Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections
, it was an album that inspired awe, but not necessarily the good kind of awe he might have been hoping for—more like shock and awe. To me it felt like the reaction was “What the fuck is this, and how do I sell it to anybody? I know this guy is someone special, but who the hell would that someone be?” But being such a supportive figure in my life, L.A. Reid supported my first album as much as he could.

I thought back about this just the other night because I went to do a bit with Will Smith at the Kids’ Choice Awards and my old friend L.A. Reid—who is now chairman and chief executive officer of Epic Records and recently a judge himself on
X Factor
—brought all his kids back to hang out with me. I wasn’t expecting any company backstage that night, so it was very cool to catch up with my old friend and booster. To me, L.A. turning up meant that either his kids are fans of mine and it was their request—or L.A. was showing me off to his children because, in a way, I’m one of his kids too. Thank you, L.A., always for being an early believer and a friend.

The record was finished and there was no going back. And on April 21, 2002, my time had come, and I finally released my first ever-solo album. If I do say so myself, that album made a whole lot of noise. Unfortunately, almost no one who wasn’t in the studio actually ever heard all that noise because almost no one bought it.

To be sure, there were some rave reviews for
Perfect Imperfections
. In
Vibe
, for example, a clearly very astute
critic named David Bray wrote, “The son of Baptist ministers, Cee-Lo has always had a lot to say. His vocal skills are matched by lyrical language rooted in the preacher tradition—as eloquent as it is wise. He has long sought spiritual truths with an honest acknowledgement of his human shortcoming (see album title) and he tackles weighty, real-world subjects with a sense of perception that is rare among writers in any field.”

Unfortunately, not many people got to hear all that truth I was sharing on
Perfect Imperfections
. Not for the last time, the rest of the world thought that I was all over the musical map and that no matter when they stopped on that map, they still didn’t hear a big hit single. Of course, the truth is that as an artist, I am still all over the place, but in much smarter ways now. I do all sorts of things all the time, but now my wide-ranging talent strikes people as being genuine. It certainly doesn’t hurt that I’m world famous now. Still, it all comes down to being true to be yourself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

Looking back, I probably wasn’t tough enough on myself as a producer. For instance, I wasn’t even concerned with radio singles. I stopped listening to the radio long ago. I listen to great music wherever I can find it, and whenever I can make it, but I never dial it in. Those of us from the Dungeon Family didn’t come from the point of view that it’s all about getting the right single. We didn’t make radio singles. We just made the coolest shit we could come up with—and for me there were all sorts of cool shit on
Perfect Imperfections
. I am still proud of so many songs
on the album, like the very wild and wonderful track “El Dorado Sunrise (Super Chicken)”—one of my grand statements about moving on from the Mob—and very personal “Gettin’ Grown” that was like a little musical memoir in its own right.

Still, without any breakout radio hits, I had to try to get hands on about promoting an album like
Perfect Imperfections
. Some people said that I was going to hate performing alone without a group, but I have never been shy. For me being a solo artist wasn’t that lonely. I was having fun, showing the world what I could do—and revealing more about myself, and I’m not just talking about the tattoos I’d show the crowd. Even as a solo artist, I still had a bunch of people up there onstage with me. In fact, around that time, I began to gather a few of disciples around me—my first entourage. That will happen in this business, especially until the money runs out.

There was one song on
Perfect Imperfections
that I felt could have broken the whole thing wide open for me. That song was called—what else—“Closet Freak.” I knew that track was strong. That groove was strong, and the concept was clear. And the word “freak” just always seemed to fit me because let’s be imperfectly clear here: I am a freak. I will stand up and own being a freak every chance I get. I have been called every kind of freak you could ever imagine, and I love it. But in the end “Closet Freak” was not the big breakout hit I hoped it would be. Still, I knew that track worked when we went to Columbia, South Carolina, for an appearance we did in a strip
club there. Boy, “Closet Freak” was an absolute smash in that room. All the wonderfully nasty ladies onstage were dancing to that song, and they took me from the stage and started dancing on me. The night got a little hazy at the end, but I remember all the girls in the club got in a line and gave me little lap dances. We had a real romp that night. So at least in Columbia, South Carolina, one crazy night, “Closet Freak” was one of the biggest and most meaningful “hits” I ever had. That’s the kind of success story I really respond to.

In retrospect, I probably didn’t help the song’s chances one bit when we made a crazy video to go with it. Coming on the heels of Goodie Mob—which was so stern and serious and almost militant and military—“Closet Freak” basically begged people to think I was gay before that was quite so widely accepted. That could have been career suicide, but I did not care about such things. Basically, when I put on a wedding dress and called myself a “Closet Freak,” I was letting my freak flag fly in my own freaky way, even though some people took that song as me coming out of the closet. I was doing no such thing—trust me, if you ever see me coming out of a closet, there will be at least one pretty lady with me. For me, “Closet Freak” was just a great funk number, and I love funk—now, then, and always.

Who survives that besides CeeLo Green? Yet I knew I had to keep jumping because as it’s turned out, some of my biggest successes have been my biggest leaps. Look at what I have always done with my life—I basically jump off
an edge and learn how to fly. I don’t want to be a false idol or try to sell people some compromised idea. I’m not here to wallow in a cesspool and squeeze out a few dollars. I am here to fight hard and try to say something.

As much as I hated being away from home, I tried to stay out on the road as long as I could to support
Perfect Imperfections
. But I happened to be back in Atlanta that June when I got another one of those bad phone calls that I always dread. This time it was Khujo’s wife, saying there had been an accident.

I rushed to the hospital as soon as I heard, and suddenly there we all were in the waiting room. It took a near tragedy to bring Goodie Mob together again. At least for one day.

It turned out that Khujo had been at the Dungeon until about four in the morning, and he fell asleep at the wheel driving home. When he woke up, his car was going through a guardrail on the side of the road. As the car rolled, that same guardrail went all the way through his car and pinned Khujo’s leg against the floor. The emergency workers had to cut him out of the car and save him, thinking it might explode. So he had to watch them cut his leg off below the knee.

He was still in surgery when I got to the hospital, and it was a terrible scene, with the women crying and everybody so worried. Seems like the whole Dungeon Family was there. We forgot our differences for the moment,
remembered how we were brothers. But then we went our ways again. Thank God Khujo pulled through, but he was a long time healing. And it took a lot longer still to heal the hard feelings between us.

Goodie Mob was a touring group, and now Khujo needed a lot of rehab before they could get back on the road. It was a hard time for them, to say the least. But by then I was already starting to think about my second solo album, and I had no intention to get back together at the time. I had marked my own course.

Gipp, Kujo, and T-Mo eventually went into the studio for their new label and came out with an album called
One Monkey Don’t Stop the Show
. The media had a lot of fun suggesting that I was the departing monkey in this situation. People said some of their songs were about me and that some of mine were about them. Those people may have even been correct some of the time. But what people did not know is that however much we might have argued, and fought and cursed each other, there was always a connection. Even when we weren’t seeing each other much, there were secret lines of communication. Gipp and I always spoke, even though the rap media was writing about how we were at war. I had invited him to appear on my first solo album. There was no doubt that we would always be in each other’s lives, some way or another.