Music

It’s that pulsating, gospel-tinged R&B tune that seems to be billowing out of every shop, car, TV and radio in town at the moment. It’s the first track ever to reach Number One on downloads alone and surely the first ever single to be A-listed on Radio 1, 2, 6Music, 1Xtra, Xfm, Choice and Capital. Even the notoriously R&B-phobic Xfm has it at the top of its A-list, while Radio 2’s Ken Bruce – that pimped-out thug well known for giving mad love to his niggaz on lockdown – has been caning it after declaring it single of the week. It’s that astonishingly catchy song where a high-pitched gospel voice is backed by a staccato bass, a punchy hip hop beat, some huge strings and a choir of angels. It’s called ‘Crazy’ and it’s by Gnarls Barkley. Only one question remains: who, in God’s name, is this Gnarls Barkley fellow? Feature continues

‘Gnarls Barkley is an ominous force,’ says Gnarls Barkley’s singer Cee-Lo Green. ‘He’s an intellectual and a poet. He’s like the wind. I am but a humble trumpet, and the wind of Gnarls Barkley blows through me. I’ve only met Mr Barkley a few times. I didn’t say much, I was swept up into his world. I just sat and listened and learned. He mack’d me. I felt very humble. He’s a charming and enlightened man.’

Where is Gnarls Barkley from?

‘You know, I listened closely to his accent – a very cultivated, educated accent – and I think he might just be British.’Is he black or white?
‘You know, I’m not entirely sure,’ says Cee-Lo. ‘He’s lighter than me. But he’s not as light as Michael Jackson…’

By now, Cee-Lo, a huge, tattooed, shaven-haired, 20-stone rapper from Atlanta, Georgia, is giggling hysterically. Gnarls Barkley, presumably a pun on the basketball legend Charles Barkley, is actually a duo comprising Cee-Lo Green (the Goodie Mob vocalist who’s guested on every OutKast album and recorded two fine solo albums with the likes of Timbaland and the Neptunes) and Danger Mouse (the mischievous producer behind the last Gorillaz album and also the DJ responsible for ‘The Grey Album’, that seditious mash-up of The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ and Jay-Z’s ‘Black Album’).

Their collaboration joins that noble subgenre that we might describe as ‘boho rap’ or ‘backpack hip hop’, hip hop with an indie sensibility and a prankish, student-friendly air. It’s a subgenre that you can trace from De La Soul to Kanye West, via Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz, Andre 3000’s OutKast and Pharrell Williams’s N*E*R*D. Outside your 50 Cents and your Eminems, it’s pretty much the only hip hop that really crosses over in the UK. Indeed, Danger Mouse’s predecessor as Gorillaz producer, Dan The Automator, made a conscious move for that indie audience when he joined De La Soul’s Prince Paul to form Handsome Boy Modeling School, another larkish project with a baffling range of guests including Alex Kapranos, The Mars Volta, Cat Power, Jack Johnson and Jamie Cullum.

But, while Handsome Boy Modeling School flopped, Gnarls Barkley looks set to clean up, if only for its keen pop sensibility. The upcoming album ‘St Elsewhere’ has at least three other sure-fire hits – another gospel-stoked track ‘Who Cares’, the Motown-tinged ‘Smiley Faces’, and the horror-movie bubblegum pop of ‘The Boogie Monster’. And, although both Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse are best known for hip hop, Gnarls Barkley features little rapping, making it more ‘boho R&B’.

This makes ‘Crazy’ a particular oddity on the playlist of the London indie station Xfm, as their head of music Nigel Harding explains. ‘Among the Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Editors and Red Hot Chili Peppers, it’s very rare that a single like this – a soul vocal, a hip hop beat, a bit dancey – will even get played on Xfm, let alone get to the very top of our A-list,’ says Harding. ‘But this really is an exceptional record that defies classification. When we started playing it, our presenters had to stress the Danger Mouse angle, asserting that it came from the same house as Gorillaz. But we’re delighted that our listeners have gone for it: it’s been Number One in our response chart. We share a building with [urban music station] Choice FM, and it’s probably the only record you’ll find on both our playlists.’

As if to confirm Gnarls Barkley’s indie credentials, the upcoming album ‘St Elsewhere’ contains a punchy digital version of ‘Gone Daddy Gone’ by the Violent Femmes. ‘It’s a homage to that indie spirit,’ says Cee-Lo. ‘We had taken an underground, indie approach; we funded it out of our own pockets, and we wanted to take risks. “St Elsewhere” is actually quite an impulsive, lo-fi record. It doesn’t sound like it, because Danger Mouse is such a great producer – but it’s a very instinctive, immediate project. Danger didn’t slave over the rhythms, and most of my vocals were done in one or two takes.’

When Cee-Lo jokes about ‘Gnarls Barkley’ speaking with a British accent, there’s actually a serious agenda about the racial politics of music on each side of the Atlantic. A self-confessed Anglophile, Cee-Lo is obsessed with early ’80s British pop and post-punk, namechecking Billy Idol, Duran Duran and Martin Fry’s ABC. Cee-Lo saw this British invasion as a challenge to US radio’s de facto segregation – a segregation that London’s increasingly Balkanised music stations are in danger of copying.

‘Now ABC, they were some cool white boys,’ says Cee-Lo, before launching into a falsetto-voiced rendition of ‘Poison Arrow’. ‘In fact, my first ever single was “The Look Of Love”, which my sister bought me on 45rpm. It was funky and genuine and soulful. I got it immediately. I’m a sucker for that weird, funky English soul from the early ’80s – George Michael, David Bowie, “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” by Culture Club, “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics. I hate how music is now so restrictive, so isolated in its respective genre. It’s not the way it used to be. Look at how black techno developed when it started following guys like Depeche Mode and Gary Numan. When music is divided into categories, so are people. I believe in One Nation Under A Groove.’