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Everybody's Brother

Page 10

by CeeLo Green


  As the split of Goodie Mob became real, I took my sweet time making my first solo album. Christine and I also took a long time to get around to making our marriage official. But in 2000, we finally walked down the aisle at my grandmother’s church in Cascade Heights. I remember that we later read an article about our big day and the reporter said that our wedding was “quaint and frugal.” I thought shit, I don’t even know what “frugal” is. I didn’t know that people assumed our net worth was all that great then because trust me, it was not. People think all the musical artists they have heard of are rich and famous, but back then and especially now, they could be very wrong. L.A. Reid didn’t pay for the wedding, but he sweetly paid for our wedding reception. Larry Mestel, the brilliant manager I have now, always jokes, “Remember, that reception was recoupable!” So I probably paid for that party one way or another because that is business as usual in the music business. But to me, it was a lovely gift and like the old Bill Withers song says, “A Lovely Day,” filled with people we loved.

  Of course my grandmother and sister and all the family was there, and a lot of Christine’s family and friends came down from North Carolina to be with us. Because of the tensions still raging between us at the time, Gipp and the guys from my Goodie Mob weren’t there. But we had friends including one of my all-time favorites in hip-hop history—the great Luke Skywalker of 2 Live Crew fame. That’s right, folks, Luther R. Campbell, or as everyone in the world of rap calls him, “Uncle Luke,” was at our reception. How do you like those family values?

  Speaking of family values, Christine and I had always talked about having a child together, and right around the time of the wedding, we learned she was pregnant with a son.

  That amazing news led me to do something I’d been meaning to do for a long time: I legally changed my name from Thomas DeCarlo Burton to Thomas DeCarlo Callaway. I wanted my son to have my mother’s maiden name, because of everything I owed to her.

  Big Gipp: I heard that CeeLo and Christine’s wedding was great, but I wasn’t there. That was during the troublesome time. But I heard CeeLo was happy, and deep down that’s all I wanted for him.

  It was a very confusing time for me and Khujo and T-Mo. Not only did we love the guy—we also needed him. We were a group that had turned down publishing deals and lived off the money that we made on the road. So when we suddenly couldn’t live off the road, we all took a big hit. Without CeeLo, we were worth less in every way. We took a huge hit in terms of our livelihood, and creatively speaking, we took a huge hit when it came to how we were going to work and put out albums. It was a big mess figuring out how to work without a key player in our group like CeeLo. Whether we would have admitted it or not right at that moment, deep down we knew it was never going to be the same without him. Look at the guy; he is literally one of a kind. How the hell do you replace a man who’s one of a kind? The answer is this: You can’t, and you’re damned if you even try.

  It was a triple whammy on us, because the group had just lost CeeLo and our manager, and then we lost our record company. CeeLo and I both got calls from L.A. Reid to come to New York, saying “I’m going to give both of you your own solo deals.” But that was at the exact brief time when CeeLo and I were not talking. With us now not communicating, still being on the same label would have felt like some sort of competition thing between him and me. My instant instinct was to opt out of that. At that point, I was so mentally disturbed by the situation in Goodie Mob, disturbed by my marriage to Joi falling apart, and disturbed by everything going on in our world that I just wanted out. I wanted out from the system we were in and the whole mess that was breaking our world apart. So I left Arista and went to Koch Records to do Goodie Mob records with T-Mo and Khujo. CeeLo stayed with L.A. Reid at Arista, and suddenly the brotherhood between us seemed like it was gone forever.

  In retrospect, if we had all stayed on the same label, we would have been pitted against each other and there would have been even more bad blood. But for the record, L.A. Reid was always great to us—from the day he pulled up at the Dungeon to shoot OutKast’s first video for Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik with Puff Daddy by his side, L.A. Reid was always the innovator, but he always listened to Goodie Mob about what we wanted to do and he put his best dollar on us being able to do that. How can you complain? So it’s amazing to look at what he’s become, and all the superstars he helped build even after he left LaFace. It’s just a testament to how great of a record man he is, and that maybe he’s the last of the great record men who is still kicking it and making music history.

  We decided on a home birth for Kingston. I was still on my extended hiatus from the road to be a husband and the head of a household. I wanted to make sure I was in place to witness the birth of my son and not somewhere else that was less significant to me. Looking back, I was so happy to be there every step of the way. Coming from where I had come from, I knew about dads who were not there—and I wanted to be there for sure. I got into the birth process just like I got into any other creative process. I truly studied the logistics.

  The baby was born in the bathtub, what they call a “water birth,” and it was a truly awesome. During the whole birth process, I just tried to be very supportive of Christine, walking her up and down steps, giving her a routine so that she wouldn’t sit there idle and in pain. I was there beside her for the whole miracle. It wasn’t scary for me, but then again, I don’t scare easy. Watching our beautiful son come into the world was profound, and I was content and confident and certain about who I was and what we were doing. Maybe for the first time in my life, I was completely proud of what we had accomplished and what we aspired to do. My sister, Shedonna, was around for Kingston’s birth, and she was pregnant herself at the time. When Kingston finally made his entrance, we all joined together to pray for this precious boy.

  Right from the very first second I saw Kingston’s face, I saw my mother in him and thankfully I saw lots of his gorgeous mother in him too. I’ll tell you something real, when I first saw him, I thought about that saying “Your daddy’s rich and your mama’s good lookin’.” Well, okay, maybe I wasn’t exactly rich yet, but I was kind of famous, and I still felt like maybe on my way. And thankfully, Kingston’s mother was beautiful in more ways that one—and she still is too. The truth is that I prayed that my son would favor my wife and not me, and that prayer was heard. He was and is perfect.

  In my mind, Kingston was a beautiful thought and idea that gradually became a very beautiful kid. And I knew deep down that my son would be better than me—because he has my best intentions at the core of me without all my flaws, physical and otherwise. I am a king who some see as a freak. We called him Kingston because he is royalty, and looks like it too. To me, Kingston’s arrival proved that my intentions are righteous. Those intentions go way beyond what I had to do and had to be on occasion along the way. I vowed that he would have a different life than I’d had. In my mind at least, I have had to slay dragons so that he won’t have to. I will never be a perfect man, but to me our son, Kingston, already is.

  How did I learn to be a good parent? Father is written in me; it’s the way that I am. Others doubt you for long enough, you begin to doubt yourself. But now I saw that I had it somewhere deep inside me to become the father I never had. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, no more than that.

  I was definitely a diaper-changing kind of dad. I was a home dad. We were living out in Fayetteville, Georgia, and life was good. I love being at home like that. Even to this day, if I could hit the lottery for a hundred million, I wouldn’t be out and about doing half the shit I do.

  In the weeks leading up to Kingston’s birth, I had played a lot of music around him and spoke to Christine’s stomach and prayed over her stomach too. Maybe that’s why my son was very quiet as a baby. He didn’t cry one bit. He’s still pretty quiet like that. But my sister remembers how worried I was that Kingston had inherited some of my less desirable traits.

  “Of course, as mischievous as Lo was a
s a child, there was that deep fear for him that his son was going to act just as bad as he was,” says Shedonna. “And back when he was very little, Kingston would come up and hug you very close and sweetly—because he was sweet then and he’s sweet now. But then after he hugged you, and before he completed his embrace, he’d sometimes bite you just as hard as he had just hugged you. And let me tell you, that scared the heck out of Lo. He flipped out, like ‘My son is going around biting people—he’s going to be trouble just like I was!” Kingston grew out of it, but Lo was so worried he would be a terror. My grandmother and I had to laugh, and we knew somewhere up there, my mother was laughing too.”

  As in all truly epic tales, there comes a time when the hero undergoes some terrible trials. Just when it looks like he’s about to reach his goal, he suffers a supreme ordeal. Like Luke Skywalker finding out who his father is, Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite, or even Jonah ending up in the belly of the whale, every hero has to be dragged into darkness before he can emerge in triumph. Your very own supernatural hero was no different. Just when I thought I had it made—a growing family, a new record deal, a solo career about to take off—the ever-clever Creator threw some serious roadblocks my way. And this otherwise uplifting story of redemption took some sad and ugly turns.

  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 bre
akout 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.

 

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