Cee Lo Green

Atlanta

Thomas Callaway was born in Atlanta on 30 May 1975 and became CeeLo Green. In 1991 he formed Goodie Mob with Big Gipp, Khujo and T-Mo, and he was the youngest of the four. The group belonged to the Dungeon Family, the Atlanta collective that also included Outkast. In 1994 Goodie Mob appeared on two tracks of Outkast's debut Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, with Green on vocals for Call of da Wild and Git Up, Git Out.

Their own debut, Soul Food, came out in November 1995 on LaFace with production by Organized Noize. It went gold the next year. In 1995 Green also sang backing vocals on TLC's Waterfalls, and the group followed with Still Standing in 1998.

Going solo

Around 1999, while the Goodie Mob album World Party was being made, Green left for a solo deal with Arista. That same year he was one of ten guests on Santana's Supernatural, sharing lead vocals with Lauryn Hill on Do You Like the Way, a song Hill wrote. His first solo record, Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections, arrived on 23 April 2002 with Green producing and Big Gipp and Backbone among the guests. Closet Freak got some radio play, but the album did not sell well. Pitchfork later called it solid but ultimately forgettable, while the Los Angeles Times had found it an unexpected delight.

Cee-Lo Green... Is the Soul Machine followed on 2 March 2004 and spread wider. The Neptunes produced The Art of Noise and Let's Stay Together, Timbaland made I'll Be Around, Jazze Pha made The One, Organized Noize handled Childz Play and Scrap Metal, DJ Premier made Evening News, and Green produced several tracks himself, among them Glockappella. It reached number 13 on the Billboard 200 and number 2 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The reviews were warm: 8.3 from Pitchfork, five stars from Mojo, four from the Guardian, whose reviewer called it a gleefully non-conformist delight. Arista dropped him after those two albums because of low sales. The book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die includes it.

Gnarls Barkley

In 2003 Green had started a duo with the producer Danger Mouse, whom he first met at a University of Georgia event. Crazy, released on 13 March 2006, became the first UK number one based on download sales alone and stayed on top for nine weeks. It peaked at number two on the US Hot 100. The album St. Elsewhere arrived in the UK on 24 April 2006, entered the UK chart at number one and reached number four in the United States. It won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. Rolling Stone placed Crazy first on its list of the 100 best songs of the 2000s.

The Lady Killer

Green returned to solo work with The Lady Killer, released on 9 November 2010 by Elektra. He reportedly spent three years on it and recorded close to 70 songs. Its lead single, Fuck You, written with Bruno Mars and his production team the Smeezingtons, reached number one in the United Kingdom and number two in the United States, and won the Grammy for Best Urban/Alternative Performance. The album went to number 9 on the Billboard 200 and became double platinum in the UK. At the 53rd Grammy Awards on 13 February 2011 he performed the clean version, Forget You, with Gwyneth Paltrow and puppets from the Jim Henson Company.

Fool for You later won two Grammys at the 54th ceremony. From 2011 to 2013 Green was a judge and coach on The Voice. He then released Cee Lo's Magic Moment, a Christmas album, in October 2012, followed by Heart Blanche in 2015 and CeeLo Green Is Thomas Callaway in 2020. Goodie Mob reunited for two more albums, Age Against the Machine in 2013 and Survival Kit in 2020. He has won five Grammys and received 18 nominations.