Cee Lo is like a chocolate-covered strawberry, sweet and nutritious. His delivery can range from soft crooning to lyrical assassin but is always easily digestible. Not only is his voice musically pleasing but his lyrics are filled with personal introspective thoughts on life. Few rappers can replicate the intimacy that Cee Lo delivers on this album.<\/p>\n
For those of you who are familiar with Cee Lo from Goodie Mob or Gnarls Barkley, you will be impressed and surprised with the way he sounds. The beginning lines of \u201cI Am Selling Soul\u201d say it best: \u201cI have yet to define myself as just one thing.\u201d Cee Lo gives his Al Green impression on \u201cAll Day Love Affair,\u201d slaughters haters on \u201cGlockapella\u201d and delivers beautiful poetry on \u201cSometimes.\u201d Defining Cee Lo is nearly impossible because most of his songs are a combination of styles.<\/p>\n
This album is not only driven by Cee Lo\u2019s tremendous vocals but also his versatile production. He produced seven tracks while inviting the likes of The Neptunes, Timbaland, Jazze Pha, Organized Noise and the one and only DJ Premier to handle the rest. The songs \u201cThe Art Of Noise\u201d (The Neptunes), \u201cThe One\u201d (Jazze Pha), \u201cMy Kind Of People\u201d (Cee Lo), and \u201cWhen We Were Friends\u201d (Cee Lo) are beautifully constructed and often used as interludes between Cee Lo\u2019s more introspective songs. On \u201cThe One,\u201d Cee Lo is joined by fellow southerner T.I. who gives a verse surprisingly reminiscent of a smooth-talking Big Daddy Kane. <\/p>\n
This album is very well put together and flows with almost no friction. Three songs consistently stand out: \u201cLiving Again,\u201d \u201cI Am Selling Soul\u201d and \u201cSometimes.\u201d Not coincidentally, Cee Lo produced all three of these and they cater to his unique style. <\/p>\n
On \u201cLiving Again,\u201d Cee Lo navigates through horns and background singing to deliver a thought-provoking performance about life. The song contains two verses with such strikingly different cadences that it\u2019s hard to believe he\u2019s on the same topic. His first one is a soft spoken personal ramble where his second one is an aggressive, almost insulting, critique. \u201cI Am Selling Soul\u201d is pure soul over a beautiful beat with an even more pleasing transition about two minutes into the song, while \u201cSometimes\u201d is a poetic masterpiece, aided by a beautiful and subtle flute-assisted beat, which allows Cee Lo’s words to stand out and reach his audience. At the end of each verse he says \u201cWhoa\u201d as if he can\u2019t even believe what he just said. This fits perfectly because \u201cSometimes\u201d contains pearls of wisdom that are far too rare in hip-hop today.<\/p>\n
The only low points on the album are the overambitious \u201cChildz Play,\u201d featuring Ludacris, and \u201cLet\u2019s Stay Together,\u201d featuring Pharrell. The former sounds cluttered and Cee-Lo\u2019s stop-n-go flow is not one of his best. Ludacris, who usually is quite clever, delivers a verse laced with charisma and precision but lacks the wit or substance we are used to hearing from him. \u201cLet\u2019s Stay Together\u201d is almost too smooth and, while some may find this pleasing to the ear, lacks the substance that is found on the rest of the album.<\/p>\n
But those two don’t take away from the sheer joy of this disc. After a time, listeners will find themselves agreeing with Cee Lo on \u201cSometimes\u201d by simply saying “whoa.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":31218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8987],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-42910","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-cee-lo-green","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42910"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42910"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}