Cee‐Lo Green… Is the Soul Machine

Old mate is a hit of a bad guy. Had some tunes I guess.

The terrible cover art doesn't help. Some of the arrangements are a little irritating, but there's some decent grooves in here.

fun!

Lord, help me, I don't even like good hip hop.

*Copy and paste the same note that I keep making about artists I disagree with personally, I am rating them based on the album because if I rated them based on them... this would be a list of nonsense*

Yeah, I mean anything Pharrell touches is pretty great to begin with. And I actually like Cee Lo's voice which I know is not the popular opinion. I think part of it may just be the absolute timing of his presence in my life. 2004 is like, when I was first able to have memories. The only thing I would say is that this album does probably count as false marketing. Not sure what part of this is giving "soul machine" but what do I know.

Season: True Spring
Favorite Song: I’ll Be Around

I’m at a 1.5 that I’ll bump up to a 2.

What do you do when a man with absolutely no credibility to back up anything he says portrays himself as the most credible man in the world? Well, I guess you elect him president based on current events. In this case, CeeLo Green tries to call himself the soul machine. He is not the soul machine. I don’t know what the fuck he is, really. Is he sent from God? He’ll tell you he is. Is he sugar sweet & just wanting to smoke dope with the people? He’ll tell you he is. Is he gonna pull out the box cutter & shoot your baby mama in the stomach just to make sure there won’t be another bitch like you? He’ll tell you he can do that too.

CeeLo Green is everything & nothing at once. He is apparently a man of several faces, all of which you can see in the reflections of his glasses in that album cover, along with his big ass face taking up 70% of the whole thing. He is a man who needs a cavalcade of producers far more talented than him with a set of samples & interpolations from performers much more talented than him, at least on this album. I had little experience with CeeLo Green going into this other than his two biggest hits. I had hoped this would be good. CeeLo Green has shattered my faith in him.

He’s hopping onto beats nobody’s ever conceived of before, bragging about himself in ways nobody’s ever said before or since, and if you truly listen to the batshit things he’s saying, there’s a track here where he claims it is the right of the people listening to this album to promote it since CeeLo is ordained by God himself as a messenger for peace & love. This is directly done behind a GoldenEye-sounding beat, following a track where he claims he’s for the Saturday morning kids, and 3 tracks before threatening to shoot a pregnant lady.

To be fair, there’s a handful of tracks I did like, an unbelievable amount of mediocre tracks, & a handful of tracks where I would think of a million other artists who could perform the tracks with more credibility based on the lyrics. I don’t think CeeLo has shooters like that, I don’t think he’s thieving like that, nor do I think he’s actually gonna shoot a pregnant woman in the belly. CeeLo’s at his best here when he’s leaning into the actual ‘soul’ he tries to claim he’s the machine of, and even then, his songwriting has absolutely no charisma behind it. “All Day Love Affair” is the least romantic love song I think I’ve ever heard in my life. He literally just calls her a friend while talking about the most basic date ideas I’ve heard in my life. Stevie Wonder was freakier on Songs in the Key of Life, for fuck’s sake.

Look, I could keep tearing into this album, and it deserves to be torn into, but I can’t spend another 5 paragraphs about CeeLo’s immense ego being carried by guest features & fun production. Don’t even get me started on “Childz Play”. Ultimately, there is little to no cohesion here whatsoever, and I don’t think CeeLo makes a single good case to keep calling himself the ‘soul machine’ by the end of it. I don’t think he can keep a consistent rap flow like that. It really is one of the worst albums on the list. That said, for as tempted as I am to give this a 1, I genuinely think there are some fun moments here, and if nothing else, the absolutely batshit unhinged flow of this album manages to keep it entertaining, no matter how abysmally bland it gets at times. Hence, a 1.5 that I will bump up to a 2. Barely. It’ll probably get that low someday.

P.S.: Fuck him for those allegations & his take on rape too.

Ah, yes, Cee-Lo Green, that “Fuck You” song person. But it isn’t on this album; guess I’m going to have to go find it on YouTube. But anyway: this isn’t a profound album, but it’s a lot of fun. I think the musicians were enjoying themselves when they were recording this. Lots of fun beats - it never dragged, made for a fun record to listen to this afternoon.

When I hear people say "I don't like rap", I imagine they're thinking of half of the songs on this album.

Tacky features, braggadocios bars with nothing to back them up. Reminds me of the a bar from Method Man's Tical yesterday: "And all you bitch-ass niggas in the industry/Your careers won't be lasting long". Cee Lo does ok with the slower soul songs, but overall the bark does not match the bite on this 70+ min album. 2/5

perfectly fine

What's with 2000s hip-hop albums being so bloated and long? I ain't tryna hear all that. It's doing too much sonically that it feels scrambled. Like there's a "gangsta" song put in between all the other tracks about love or flexing as the "Soul Machine". It's like he's trying to be both a crooner and a hardcore rapper, most evident in his vocals and cadence.

Listened before? No

Familiar with the artist? Yes, a couple of songs

Thoughts:
- The first thing I thought when I refreshed and saw this was 'really?! They put Cee-lo in the book? How?'
- Still giving it a chance but about halfway in I'm still kind of baffled... His voice is just unpleasant to me, no matter if he's trying to sing or rap.
- Yeah, definitely one of the worst albums I've gotten yet, congrats Cee-lo 😬

In hell, this comes out of the speakers when you put on an OutKast album

It's long, but not terrible.

I really need to get myself a copy of the book so that I can see what kind of bullshit justification they give for including this album in the book. This is just soul music filtered through the lens of a mediocre at best hip-hop artist. I have genuinely always considered Cee-Lo as a one-hit wonder, and that hit isn’t even on this album.

I didn't have enough time to carefully listen to the whole album but from the first songs it's pretty clear that Cee-Lo Green's "Soul Machine" is not my cup of tea: hip hop injected pop with a funny main voice. Not really bad either, so a clear 2/5

The problem w/ a record like Cee-Lo Green...Is The Soul Machine, which is by no means a bad record, but still a significantly wanting one, is that it's a bit schizophrenic: too conscious to be blinged-out, too superficial to be a soulful romp, too smooth to be deep, too deep to be a sexualized banger, & too a lot of things to be a couple of meaningful things. That has its real & associated pleasures - I don't mind a long, all-over-the-place kind of thang - & Cee-Lo certainly had an all-star cast of features/producers (too vast to list) behind this lengthy release, but it kinda ends up just being large rather than epic. His voice is not only instantly recognizable - it's made to make records (check out 'I Am Selling Soul'). Yet, w/ Goodie Mob, he's still best.

Ei auf Stelzen

Didn’t have issues up until the the second half. I got bored and wondered when the album would end. 6/10 at best

NO. ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT.

It took me a while to figure out why I didn't like this. Cee Lo's rapping style is okay, the production is sometimes interesting, and I'm usually a fan of eccentric voices. When I got to Childz Play, it hit me. What was absolutely killing me was this guy's attitude. He is trying soooo hard to sell me on the fact he's the greatest rapper, the greatest singer, there's nothing he can't do. Well okay then, stop trying to sell me on that and just do it already. Stop trying to convince me that you are the Soul Machine™ and just.../be/ the Soul Machine™. It's so endlessly frustrating. I cannot get past his attitude whatsoever. The only parts of the album I legitimately enjoyed are the parts where someone else is speaking! UGH!

Я люблю нарлс барклі, але цей альбом як на мене сильно програє їм. Особливо друга половина максимально нудна. 2.5