CD: CeeLo Green - Heart Blanche

CeeLo Green is a real character, a personality in an age when pop is dominated by a homogenous mush of “sexy”, gym-bodied, media-trained nothingness. Hits such as "Crazy", with Gnarls Barkley, and his own “Fuck You” propelled him from a quirky southern US hip hop outsider into the pantheon of proper stars. More recently, his career has been mired in a court case wherein he was accused of spiking a dinner date with Ecstasy.

Last summer he acceded to the drug aspect but was cleared of non-consensual sex. His fifth album, then, can be seen, especially in America where the case received more publicity, as his potential rehabilitation by the public.

Heart Blanche, at its best, is a blast. For starters, Green is lyrically off the wall. “Est 1980s”, a catchy tribute to his own youth, tinted with a guitar sound from the decade in question, is full of memorable lines – “I loved Duran Duran and did 'The Safety Dance' in front of my TV” or “Run DMC looked just like me, God bless your heart.” Sometimes he’s almost babbling the words out, cramming them into the music, as on “CeeLo Green Sings The Blues”, a doo-wop update that sweeps the listener along. It can be a bit much – the single “Robin Williams”, which makes reference to everyone from John Belushi to Philip Seymour Hoffman, overplays its Robin Williams-as-clown-martyr card – but the playful ambition is to be relished.

Musically Heart Blanche is gospel-basted soul-pop, occasionally stripped to pulsing post-EDM R&B (as on "Working Class Heroes (Work)"), all of it constructed by an army of studio experts, producer-songwriters behind hits from artists such as Jason Derulo, Pharrell Williams, Bruno Mars, Adele, Kendrick Lamarr and Florence Welch, as well as input from Mark Ronson. However, CeeLo musters more cheeky individuality than any of these names (except possibly Pharrell), and songs such as the disco torch number “Tonight”, a Gloria Gaynor-meets-the Weather Girls affair, explode with his zest for life. There are enough like it to make this an album worth sifting for treats.

Overleaf: Watch the video for "Music to my Soul"