For the most part, it sounds like two guys playing around and having fun, sometimes more fun than the listener. Which is only track four.ĭon't get me wrong: This is not some grand genre-busting mission statement. And that's before you get to the tossed-off Violent Femmes cover. Even the lyrical themes of this album- madness, depression, monsters, visionaries, being yourself- seem like conscious attempts to be arty. The two of them: They're trying something new here, you know. Who does Gnarls Barkley pair him with, the two of them dressed up like Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange droogs, or Wayne and Garth? DJ Danger Mouse, a guy known by undie-rap geeks for his own beats but read-about-in- Entertainment Weekly for mashing up Jay-Z and the Beatles. (Avenues he's tried include futurism, mysticism, Baduism, sincerity, dandified couture, genre-less chart hits, and close study of Aphex Twin.) The same goes for Cee-Lo, one half of the Gnarls Barkley duo- a Goodie Mob rapper turned funk freak and soul-shouting faux preacherman.
Andre 3000, of Outkast: It might seem like he's just trying to be weird, but the guy has spent the last decade visibly searching for some new way to be- not just new music, but a whole new model of identity for the black male musician. Two guys interested in scratching that itch, hip-hop-wise, are both associates in Atlanta's Dungeon Family.
#Cover or album gnarls barkley st. elsewhere free#
This kind of uneasiness isn't new, of course, but it's interesting: It seems like there's a big itch out there right now, everyone looking for ways to make the music feel as new and free as it did when they first came across it. Now that hip-hop has nearly three decades under its belt, every major genre of American pop music is more or less "mature." You know how rock geeks, after nine or 10 years immersed in the genre, start looking elsewhere for surprises- hip-hop, dance, bluegrass, anything they haven't already figured out? Well, these days we can read Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee telling Tape Op that rap is all repetitive big business now, and claiming that alternative rock is where the innovation is- in other words, sounding not unlike an old rock guy wondering why bands still sound like the Velvet Underground. I don't mean to spin any big theories on you- this isn't that kind of record- but let's stop for a second and notice the context.
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