By Brian Ives
It’s been a minute since CeeLo and Danger Mouse have worked together as Gnarls Barkley. Since their second and most recent album, 2008’s The Odd Couple, CeeLo became a mainstream celebrity when he was a judge on The Voice for four seasons. Of course, he enjoyed a massive 2010 solo album The Lady Killer which featured the classic “F— You.” And he’s currently promoting his next album, Heart Blanche.
But he’s also looking forward to the project that he hopes will come after that: CeeLo tells Radio.com that he’s looking to make it another Gnarls Barkley album.
“I just talked to him last night,” he said, when asked if he’s spoken to Danger Mouse recently. “I told him, ‘This is the next thing we should do.’ I know he’s about to do the Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ album. I hope he does great with that, but I said, ‘Hey, I need you to be able to split your attention. We need another Gnarls album, and so do the people.'”
Danger Mouse, of course, is a busy guy; other than the Chili Peppers, he’s recently worked with U2, Norah Jones and A$AP Rocky and, according to numerous reports, is working on the new Adele album. So the scheduling of a new Gnarls Barkley album might be tricky.
“We just have to set aside the time,” CeeLo says. “But we did [2006 debut album] St. Elsewhere in a week, because we only had 10 days to be productive. He was working on the Gorillaz album at that time, and I was working on some freelance stuff, like the Pussycat Dolls ‘Dontcha’ and stuff like that. I was just writing and producing, I didn’t have a record deal at the time. And he’s a producer, he’s always a free agent. We got together, we didn’t know what it was going to be about. But he told me one great thing: ‘I like your music. Or at least I like most of it. I notice there’s a theme in all of your work: you’ve got a lot of good that you, at least, attempt to do. But it’s my understanding that anybody who is trying to do that much good has also done an equal amount of bad. And that’s what I want to hear.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, OK!’ It was like a dare. He was giving me unique and very peculiar sounding things. I was like, ‘You’re pretty f—ed up, aren’t you?'”
CeeLo’s Heart Blanche is due out on November 6.
