“Crazy”
from the album St. Elsewhere
2006
iTunes
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In 1998, Brian Burton was a distracted art student at the University of Georgia who spent his idle hours tinkering with a drum machine in his dorm room. So when Burton flipped Goodie Mob rapper Cee-Lo his glitchy demo after a show, he didn’t expect much to come of it. Fast-forward to 2003: Burton, now calling himself Danger Mouse (and just months away from blowing up with the Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up The Grey Album), is producing an album by New York MC Jemini. Cee-Lo — who had recently put out a critically acclaimed solo album of freaked-out soul — agrees to sing on a track, impressed with Burton’s wacky, symphonic production. “It was right down my alley,” says Cee-Lo. “I was like, ‘Let me get on a couple of your tracks.’ And he said, ‘I don’t do tracks, I do albums.’ “
Coming from Cee-Lo, who scored a hit with his 2003 Timbaland-produced “I’ll Be Around” and Danger Mouse, who produced Gorillaz’ Demon Days, it’s no surprise that St. Elsewhere (the pair’s first album as Gnarls Barkley) is a genre-defying mix of hip-hop, soul, electro and, uh, college rock (check the funked-up cover of the Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone”).
“Almost half the album was done via e-mail,” says Cee-Lo. “He would send me something, and I would go into the studio and cut it.” Adds Danger Mouse, “We were really competing, trying to impress each other. I was just trying to send him the most out-there stuff, and he was trying to outdo it.” This year, the two finally got together in the studio to finish St. Elsewhere. Many of the songs — including the Al Green-at-a-rave single “Crazy” — were cut in a single take.
In the U.K., “Crazy” went straight to Number One before it was even available in stores — based on the volume of downloads alone. But Danger Mouse fears stateside listeners might not be as quick to embrace it: “It’s too out there for urban radio, and it’s too urban for rock radio.” Cee-Lo has a more positive spin, saying, “Were we crazy to try to break down boundaries? Well, was Dr. Frankenstein crazy? Or was he convinced, completely convinced of something?”