of us rented a cabin in the Georgia woods and mapped out the concepts. Then I got my tonsils taken out and I was in bed for two weeks. It gave me some time at home and time to actually sit with my notebooks and write my rhymes and think mythoughts. There wasn’t a lot of freestyling or small talk for me. For me it was about a lot of big ideas—and just the facts, ma’am. Personally, I liked our second album even more than the first. I still love the song “They Don’t Dance No Mo’ ” and the crazy video we made of it which featured me as a dancing baby with moves like Michael Jackson. The wild sense of humor that I display now, I was displaying back at times then too, but people didn’t really know me yet so they didn’t always get the joke at all. Around my friends and family, I’ve always been a pretty funny guy, but definitely back in the Goodie Mob days, the perception around us was so serious because we were pushing some deadly serious ideas. But on my own, I have always loved making people laugh. I found that it felt a lot better than making people scared—which is something I also knew all about.
There were some dark themes in that second album too, because it was a dark time. Tupac and Biggie Smalls had both been killed, and the East Coast–West Coast beefs were ripping the Hip-Hop Nation apart. We’d known both Biggie and Tupac, so it was personal. In fact, we had just been out on the West Coast, talking about doing some recording with ’Pac.
Big Gipp: Our path in Goodie Mob was not like anyone else’s. You could see our ending in our beginning. And you could see our beginning in our end. On one level, we had the perfect start—our first album,
Soul Food
, went gold and had three songs that made the Top 10 on the rap charts—“Cell Therapy” went to number 1 on the rap singles, then “Soul Food” went to number 7, and finally “Dirty South” went to number 8, with all three songs making the Billboard Hot 100 Pop chart too. Our first tour was amazing too and became iconic because it featured us along with two other great groups who were coming on strong then: the Fugees and the Roots. That’s a whole lot of talent right there, and everybody got along great. We were all one big, happy, freaky hip-hop family all out to take over the world with music and soul.
It meant even more to us because we didn’t sell out with some dance party, we came out of the box saying something that was tough and no-nonsense. We were not just fighting to make our name, we were fighting for the prominence and the respect of Southern hip-hop. And we were winning. In Goodie Mob, we did not view ourselves as some “act.” We viewed ourselves as musical messengers with a word to spread. And we were proud of being monthlyguests on a BET show called
Teen Summit
then and doing our small part to educate black kids about their history a little. But the first time I totally realized that CeeLo has a gift way beyond just music was when we met with Minister Louis Farrakhan. Now that was a day to remember, when CeeLo ended up doing some ministering of his own.
Around this time Minister Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam called together the rap community for a big conference in Chicago to create some kind of coalition, a sort of peace treaty to try to unify the hip-hop world and stop the war that was brewing and likely would have continued. That day we were going around the table and everyone was discussing this, that, and the other thing. And when the microphone came in front of me, I preached. That’s the only way that I can put it. And if you’ve ever been to a black church, you know what I mean. Maybe it was genetic, considering my heritage. In any case, something kicked in and I found myself opening my big mouth and giving my own hip-hop sermon about the need to stop the madness and start spreading a better world. I was inspired that day. I started talking about what was going on and about what we needed to do about
There were some dark themes in that second album too, because it was a dark time. Tupac and Biggie Smalls had both been killed, and the East Coast–West Coast beefs were ripping the Hip-Hop Nation apart. We’d known both Biggie and Tupac, so it was personal. In fact, we had just been out on the West Coast, talking about doing some recording with ’Pac.
Big Gipp: Our path in Goodie Mob was not like anyone else’s. You could see our ending in our beginning. And you could see our beginning in our end. On one level, we had the perfect start—our first album,
Soul Food
, went gold and had three songs that made the Top 10 on the rap charts—“Cell Therapy” went to number 1 on the rap singles, then “Soul Food” went to number 7, and finally “Dirty South” went to number 8, with all three songs making the Billboard Hot 100 Pop chart too. Our first tour was amazing too and became iconic because it featured us along with two other great groups who were coming on strong then: the Fugees and the Roots. That’s a whole lot of talent right there, and everybody got along great. We were all one big, happy, freaky hip-hop family all out to take over the world with music and soul.
It meant even more to us because we didn’t sell out with some dance party, we came out of the box saying something that was tough and no-nonsense. We were not just fighting to make our name, we were fighting for the prominence and the respect of Southern hip-hop. And we were winning. In Goodie Mob, we did not view ourselves as some “act.” We viewed ourselves as musical messengers with a word to spread. And we were proud of being monthlyguests on a BET show called
Teen Summit
then and doing our small part to educate black kids about their history a little. But the first time I totally realized that CeeLo has a gift way beyond just music was when we met with Minister Louis Farrakhan. Now that was a day to remember, when CeeLo ended up doing some ministering of his own.
Around this time Minister Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam called together the rap community for a big conference in Chicago to create some kind of coalition, a sort of peace treaty to try to unify the hip-hop world and stop the war that was brewing and likely would have continued. That day we were going around the table and everyone was discussing this, that, and the other thing. And when the microphone came in front of me, I preached. That’s the only way that I can put it. And if you’ve ever been to a black church, you know what I mean. Maybe it was genetic, considering my heritage. In any case, something kicked in and I found myself opening my big mouth and giving my own hip-hop sermon about the need to stop the madness and start spreading a better world. I was inspired that day. I started talking about what was going on and about what we needed to do about
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