Cee-Lo Green... Is the Soul Machine

1	Intro 0:22
2	Soul Machine 1:40
3	The Art of Noise 3:45
4	Living Again 3:36
5	I'll Be Around 3:41
6	The One / T.I. 4:42
7	My Kind of People / Menta Malone 3:54
8	Childz Play 3:54
9	I Am Selling Soul 4:16
10	All Day Love Affair 4:11
11	Evening News / Sir Cognac the Conversation 4:12
12	Scrap Metal / G Rock 4:39
13	Glockapella 5:20
14	When We Were Friends 3:42
15	Sometimes 5:03
16	Let's Stay Together 3:53
17	Die Trying 4:04
18	What Don't You Do? (Outro) 0:20

All Music Guide

Cee-Lo's debut album had been an interesting listen but resonated with very few listeners, so some changes were due for his second go-round, Cee-Lo Green Is the Soul Machine, which is indeed a drastically improved effort. Arista head honcho L.A. Reid had no doubt let Cee-Lo fly his freak flag high and mighty for Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections (2002), for what resulted was an album that was, in a word, curious -- a sprawling carnival of Dirty South-inflected soul singing that knew no boundaries whatsoever, willfully professing its weirdness on out-there songs like the lead single, "Closet Freak," the closest Cee-Lo came to crossing over commercially. In other words, cross over à la OutKast he didn't -- not by a long shot. In fact, most listeners took him at face value and wrote him off as a freak. It'd be a real shame if that happened again with Cee-Lo Green Is the Soul Machine. Sure, the big guy is still fairly weird here, but he's tastefully weird and, above all, focused this time. He's written a stronger batch of songs and has aligned himself with some of the best producers in the industry (the entire industry, that is): Timbaland and the Neptunes, most notably, and also Jazze Pha, Organized Noize, and DJ Premier. How he managed to rein in such a team of big-money producers is a good question (maybe the concurrently dismissed L.A. Reid can answer that one), but the result is nothing short of delightful. The album opens with a flawless run of radio-ready tunes -- "The Art of Noise" through "My Kind of People" -- and then spins off into a mélange of Cee-Lo-isms: stream-of-consciousness spoken word-style raps that cut deep, stirred into kaleidoscopic musical arrangements that straddle the hip-hop and deep soul eras simultaneously, all of it utterly distinct from track to track, ultimately culminating all too soon at the 65-minute mark. Once again Cee-Lo has recorded a peerless album, except this time he's recorded one that should connect, or at least deserves to. OutKast's Speakerboxx/The Love Below (especially André 3000's half) is probably the best touchstone you're liable to find this side of your imagination, in terms of not only style but also quality and vision. Jason Birchmeier

Rolling Stone

1/2 The album overflows with horns, P-Funk choruses, pricey beats and enough interlocking harmonies to fill a Bach cantata; at the same time, he's cuddly enough to keen an Al Green-style ballad where he asks his girl to "make it a Blockbuster night." Christian Hoard

Blender

On his second album, Cee-Lo continues hurtling into his own heady orbit. Hua Hsu