Everybody's Brother (21 page)

So before “Fuck You,” I just continued to stand my own ground and do my own thing. Having stepped away from Gnarls Barkley, I spent what felt like years trying to come up with the right record to get Atlantic excited about my
next solo album. The music industry was changing dramatically now, and suddenly it seemed like the label was afraid to put anything out for fear that it might fail. As a true artist, I have never worked that way. In my heart, I am not interested in trying to blend in and just have a hit—any hit.

Big Gipp:
The attitude of CeeLo’s record company at the time was like “Okay, you’re Mr. Gnarls Barkley, and you had that big hit, so here’s your big record deal now give us another one of those ‘Crazy’ things.” But CeeLo didn’t have another “Crazy” in his back pocket, and that’s not what he wanted to do anyway. So Atlantic was like “So maybe you do need Danger Mouse?” CeeLo’s attitude as always was to stand his ground. He said, “No, I just need to do what I do.” Lo was waiting on the right record as impactful as “Crazy,” but just like that song, it had to be another great record that came totally out of left field. You just can’t rush a classic. Like the Lord himself, CeeLo works in mysterious ways that work only for him. The man doesn’t go by anyone else’s guidelines or schedule. So for something like three years, it felt like CeeLo was making lots of records just for himself. CeeLo will wait on greatness, but record companies feel like time is money. But when record companies begin to doubt CeeLo, CeeLo just smiles more. He’s very strategic that way. He just thinks it’s funny when people underestimate him.

The weirdness for a moment or two between Bruno Mars and CeeLo only comes from the way the music business works today—or to be honest,
kind of works today. There’s a huge rush to come in and take credit for anything that works—because so little does work. There was some competition there because of that, but it’s cool. We showed up in the studio and when we first came in they were like, “We have an idea for a song called ‘Fuck You.’ ” They had that part. CeeLo walked outside and he said, “Gipp, I don’t know if this shit will work. I can think of a million reasons and places it won’t work, but I like it anyway. I told CeeLo, “This record is what a lot of people are going through. They’re pissed and the bubble just burst and a lot of people are not happy. They’re losing their homes. They’re losing their jobs. And they’re losing their relationships. I think this record could capture the core of what people are feeling out there right now.” CeeLo said okay, and they started to change some words and flesh out the song. Lo got to the third verse and he just freestyled that whole “WHY” bit, and that was a turning point in his head. That’s when he started to say, this record is funny. When they finished the record, I knew it was a smash—not as big a smash as it turned out to be, but I knew it was going to be plenty big. Because “Crazy” and “Fuck You” in my mind were kind of like great Goodie Mob records. It was CeeLo really saying something and going against the grain. There’s a little bit of pop America that wants a taste of real life
and not another song about partying in the club. But I think you needed a true messenger like CeeLo to deliver those kinds of left-field messages. No disrespect, but “Fuck You” would not have become what it became if it was sung by Bruno Mars or by anyone else in the solar system. There are songs only CeeLo could sell to the world. People believed CeeLo when he said, “Fuck You.” He has to believe what he says and what he sings. He does not do this for the money—he does it because it’s what he’s here to do. And that’s why he always wins, and as long as he keeps that attitude and that approach, I am betting that he keeps on winning.

But in the end—after all the industrial overthinking and music biz double-talk—it all usually comes down to one great song, that one undeniable song that explodes and leaves a mark that’s powerful and permanent. “Fuck You” was—and is—one of those songs.

For the record, all our foul-mouthed fun began when our A&R man at Atlantic told me one day about a couple of staff writers who might be worth meeting. And that’s how I was introduced to the very talented man the world now knows as Bruno Mars and his musical partner, Phil Lawrence. This is not to insult them—that’s just who they were to me at that point because this was still early on in their journey. Today the Smeezingtons—Bruno, Phil, and
their musical partner Ari Levine—are well-known and respected hit-makers, not just for Bruno himself but for lots others artists too, but back when we first met, their reputation was still just developing.

I was told that these young guys were very talented and that if I didn’t mind, it would be good to open up a little creative space with them and bounce around some ideas. In this business, you meet a whole lot of people. Some professional relationships go nowhere fast—others will change your life—so it usually pays to keep an open mind. The word was that these would be good guys to get to know, and in this case at least, the word turned out to be right.

At the time, I was feeling creatively frustrated and open to trying anything different to get some different results. So Phil and Bruno came over to the place I was working, Nightbird Studios at the famous Sunset Marquis Hotel in LA. We all chatted for a while. I was working on a track at the time and they were being accommodating to me on this particular occasion and added some little background parts. Unfortunately, at some point that night, all the small talk became awkward for me, so I pulled the sort of disappearing act that I sometimes do when I get uncomfortable. I told Bruno and Phil that I was going to the restroom, and I just never came back.

So the chemistry wasn’t exactly instant between us. In music as in love, you don’t always experience love at first sight. Sometimes it takes a second coming. Eventually—despite my admittedly rude brush-off on our first writing
date—we got back together, and the next time we really hit it off. It helped that these two guys Bruno Mars and Phil Lawrence turned out to be so much fun, and I have a fully functioning sense of humor too. As a result, the second time around, the three us talked and laughed and cracked jokes and got along like a trio of crazy frat brothers in a house on fire. And things suddenly became very productive.

People probably do not realize it, but “The Way You Are”—which later became a big smash for Bruno—was written for me. The song “Dr. Feelgood” that Travie McCoy ended up doing was my song initially too. And “The Other Side” that featured me with B.o.B. was originally going to be my song as well. So to their credit, these ambitious young guys were really pitching and trying to find something that truly fit me. I also learned that like most good artists, Bruno had already been through battles of his own. Like me, Bruno was an underdog with attitude who had to reinvent himself to make it big. Do you think it’s easy for a little Filipino dude born Peter Gene Hernandez from Honolulu to take over the world? If so, think again. Even though Bruno was still a young dude, he’d already been through the ringer himself, including getting a record deal with Motown when he was only eighteen that ended in total frustration and with Bruno getting dropped. In the end, of course, talent wins out, and that would prove to be Motown’s very big loss.

Over the three long years of recording material for what would become my
Lady Killer
album, I was—to put
it nicely—extremely anxious to get the ball rolling with something. The core problem is that as an artist, I move quickly, and the music business doesn’t move nearly as well as it used to do. I treasure being spontaneous, and the music business seems based on overthinking everything. It reminds me of those lines that I dramatically and rather sexily intone at the start of
The Lady Killer
album:

Hello there. My name is… not important.

I’m often asked what do I do for a living, and I respond

I do what I want. Spontaneity is the spice of life

And I’ve indulged quite a bit

Call me self-indulgent—hey, I’ve been called worse—but I think I understand the business of being CeeLo Green at least as well as anyone else on Earth. And it seemed pretty crazy to not take better advantage of all the global heat from the success of “Crazy,” but in the music business today, record companies are remarkably reluctant to take a chance. They don’t want to put anything but surefire hits out, and that kind of thinking can lead to a kind of musical paralysis.

They call what we do popular music, so in my mind you have got to bring the population into the equation eventually. The question always becomes—how are you going to know what people respond to about your music unless those people get the chance to hear your music? Especially in an age where technology has made music so easy to steal, it is protected from the public too much. For
me, music is an art—not a science—and you need people to respond your art to really know how it works. As artists and executives, we all have ideas about what we think will work, but then the people ultimately tell us what they love. You’ve got to let people do their part. That being said, I didn’t really get the support I was looking for, or at least that’s how I felt. I was smiling through the pain, but I was still hurting and getting more and more tired waiting to make my next move.

As we were waiting for lighting to strike and Atlantic to finally put out a goddamn record, we continued to look for the exact right song that would light a fire under the record company’s ass and kick-start the hearts of music lovers everywhere. That’s an expensive process, so we started to work out of Bruno’s home studio, and one day in particular, I went over and the guys were excited. Phil said, “We think we’ve got something. This could really be something.” I loved their enthusiasm, but then again, by now, I knew they were highly excitable characters, so I said something like “Okay, what do you got?” And at this moment, what Bruno and Phil had was the start of a track. It was the first piano chords, no drums or anything, but it did have that cool “Bum-Bum-Bum” piano bit that the world would soon be grooving on.

Even then, the song was called “Fuck You,” which at first sounded silly and by definition highly uncommercial. Thankfully, that was not the way we were thinking that day so we pushed on. To me, the concept of a song called “Fuck You” sounded just ridiculous enough to be
spiteful—and just spiteful enough to be absolutely wonderful. What they first played me wasn’t some runaway hit, or even a complete musical thought yet. Yet to my ears it was a very good, very rude start. So I immediately got into working on this song because it seemed even crazier than “Crazy,” which meant this could finally be my chance to be totally absurd.

The secret of our success with “Fuck You” is that the storyline was fictitious, but the sentiment was genuine. Once we got into finishing the song, I connected with it in a big way. Like no shortage of recording artists before and after me, I wanted to tell the record company to go and fuck themselves in the sweetest possible way. And at least for a fleeting moment, I sincerely hoped that the song would be so rude that it would actually get me dropped by the label and I could get a fresh start.

But who would have guessed that after years of recording songs—a few of which I gave away on a mix tape and some good ones that no one will ever hear until I die and maybe not even then—my entire career as a recording artist would all come down to a song called “Fuck You”?

Talk about overnight sensations—that song literally took off in one day. We were leaving Los Angeles going to London and we had been given the word that our song was finally going to be released that day. And by the time we landed in London eight hours later, we heard that we had a massive hit record. They tell me that “Fuck You” was played more than two million times in the first five days.

Before we ever released “Fuck You,” we cut the “clean”
version of the song known as “Forget You,” thinking radio would want to jump onto the viral bandwagon without losing their licenses for playing something as flagrant and foul as the F word. Thankfully, all of our wishful thinking came true. We knew we had a hot flare of a first single, but we had a more politically correct and diplomatic version ready. Unlike most hit singles that drop off the charts pretty fast, this song just seemed to get bigger and bigger, staying on the Billboard Hot 100 for a total of forty-eight weeks, eventually knocking Lady Gaga off the number 1 position.