Cee Lo Green biography

Synopsis

Early Life and Career

Cee Lo Green was born Thomas DeCarlo Callaway in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 30, 1974. In the early 1990s, Cee Lo and three others started the hip-hop group Goodie Mob, releasing their first album, Soul Food, in 1995. Cee Lo both rapped and sang with Goodie Mob, a double duty that was seldom undertaken in the hip-hop world at the time. The band released its last album in 1999.

In 2002, Cee Lo launched his solo career with the album Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections. The album didn't sell well, and its 2004 follow-up, Cee-Lo Green... Is the Soul Machine, similarly failed to impress.

Gnarls Barkley

Cee Lo went on to form a collaboration entitled Gnarls Barkley with Danger Mouse, and the duo released their first album together, St. Elsewhere, in 2006. The album's first single, "Crazy," quickly became a major international smash, debuting at No. 1 on the U.K. download chart, where it stayed for 11 weeks. "Crazy" was also named Rolling Stone's No. 1 song of the decade, as well as the magazine's No. 100 song of all time.

Cee Lo has described the music of Gnarls Barkley as "electric industrial Euro soul." In 2008, Gnarls Barkley released a second album, The Odd Couple, which met with mixed reviews—while reviewers liked the work, it received far less commercial attention than its predecessor.

Return to Solo Career

Returning to solo mode, Cee Lo released the single "F--- You" on August 10, 2010, online, where it became an instant hit, receiving more than 2 million hits in less than a week. (The album on which the song appeared, The Lady Killer, was released in November 2010). "F--- You" soon made its debut at No. 1 on the U.K. charts, and went on to garner five Grammy Award nominations. Reworked into the more radio-friendly "Forget You," the song was propelled to even greater heights.

'The Voice'

Cee Lo went on to appear as a judge/coach on the reality television show The Voice, which debuted on NBC on April 26, 2011. Cee Lo starred alongside fellow music industry figures Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton and Adam Levine on the show, which was a hit with audiences from the start. After three seasons on The Voice, in 2012, Cee Lo announced that he was taking a break from the series. According to the musician, he plans to return as a judge for the show's fifth season: "I'm going on hiatus," he explained on the Today show in December 2012. "I'm doing a Las Vegas residency next year." Filling in for Cee Lo for season 4 of The Voice was R&B singer-songwriter Usher. Christina Aguilera, who also left the series after its third season in 2012, was replaced by Latin pop singer Shakira.

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