Cee Lo Looks Beyond the Grammys to New Gnarls Barkley and Goodie Mob

Cee Lo Green has been in the music business for a mighty long time, but this past year was the first time that he broke through as a solo artist on the back of his viral epic 'F--- You' and its accompanying album, 'The Lady Killer.'

This weekend Cee Lo will see if his profane pop single takes home any Grammy gold after scoring five nominations -- including record of the year and song of the year -- but the psychedelic soul singer isn't prepared to sit on his laurels. He tells Spinner there are already plans for a new Gnarls Barkley album with producer Danger Mouse. "It'll be a different time and space," he says, though admitting "we have not spoken about music yet."

The success of 'F--- You' takes the pressure off following up a smash like 'Crazy' (though Cee Lo notes, "nobody pressures me about anything"), but he's still surprised by how popular the project became in the first place.

"I had no idea that Gnarls Barkley or that song, in particular, would become so commercially celebrated. I thought I was saying 'f--- you,' y'know what I'm saying? F--- you, I'm going to insist on doing it my way -- that's what 'Crazy' is, it's about the music, the path that we've chosen, the will and the way that we've made for ourselves. And are we, or were we, crazy to continuously insist on it."

Crazy like a fox, maybe, given Cee Lo's slow but steady rise from Atlanta-raised gospel singer to Dirty South rapper in Goodie Mob to Gnarls Barkley's psychedelic soul singer and, finally, Grammy-nominated solo pop star. So there's no reason to doubt the sanity of his next move.


"People have been in awe of my ability to gauge where to go. I'm never in the same place for long, but I can revisit those places. They miss me," he says, by way of explaining his upcoming return to rap. "I'm cool with my neighbors in hip-hop, which happens to be a community. They're like, 'Where have you been? You have newspapers all over your porch. Are you alright? You aright in there?' 'Yeah, I just don't read the paper and forgot to tell them to stop sending it here.' It's kinda like that.

"I wanted to get 'Lady Killer' out of the way. I've lived with that album for the last three years, I've had the material. It's not new to me. I'm done with it," he says, adding he's now ready to rejoin Big Gipp, T-Mo and Khujo in a long-awaited Goodie Mob reunion.

"I'll think I'll do like maybe a rap solo kinda mixtape thing to kinda warm it up [but] Goodie Mob, collectively, is the only thing I care about rapping about."