More than four years after their last album, Goodie M.O.B. is back, and this time they’re out to prove a point. Cee-Lo or no Cee-Lo, Goodie M.O.B. (Khujo, T-Mo, and Big Gipp) is still standing, still relevant and out to show why One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show.
In the 90’s, Goodie M.O.B. blessed the hip hop community with two unquestionably exceptional albums in Soul Food and Still Standing. But with an early ninety’s hip hop community still largely segregated by regions, dialects, and production taste, the superlative consistency and overall dopeness of Goodie’s work went largely underappreciated by hip hop communities outside the Dirty. But as with anything great, neighboring hip hop fans began to take notice and the Goodie—along with brethrens Outkast—found themselves truly becoming usher’s of Southern hip hop’s soul and dexterity.
Unlike Outkast, whose propensity to speak of social ills with wit and clarity came more with maturation, Goodie stepped into the game with a depth that placed them above mere rhymers. But with any group (See The Beatles or Tribe Called Quest) it’s not long before the public begins to love one member above the rest and when Goodie’s second album, Still Standing hit stores in 98’, it became clear to some Goodie fans that the short, stocky guy with the high-pitched voice had a special talent. More and more Cee-Lo became the public face of Goodie M.O.B., despite the irrefutable talents of Big Gipp, Khujo, and T-Mo. Then when fans and critics alike were put off by 1999’s World Party, the typical tensions of a music group ballooned into irreconcilable proportions. A devastating car accident involving member Khujo, the defection of Cee-Lo from their ranks, and being dropped by their label left Goodie M.O.B. seemingly in the burial ground along side many of hip hop’s forgotten finest.
Big Gipp hollered at Allhiphop.com to drop some science on Goodie’s relationship with Cee-Lo and the state of the Union in the ol’ U.S.A.
AllHipHop.com: Everybody is familiar with Goodie Mob being pretty aware of the things going on in their community and in the country, what do you think about this upcoming presidential election?
Big Gipp: It’s not really what I think about it, it’s about what we gone do. I don’t think neither one of the men really represents us. The close thing I could say is the dude, the Kerry guy. I think I’d try anybody besides Bush right now. First of all, Bush got into the White House on some farce s**t. Second of all, his family is an oil company. His father was one of the people who helped put Saddam Hussein in power, his family also put their oil company’s in control of saving the oil out of Iraq, it’s political dawg. So to a certain extent our war against Irag is really a family business that the country has been put in the middle of. So right now I think the biggest thing that we have to do is to get Bush out of office. At the end of the day Bush is a punk, he’s a punk cause anybody who could just go to war, and ain’t never been to war before…ya know, soldiers don’t go to war over money and he’s not a soldier, so at the end of the day I can’t really be led by a dude who never experienced combat himself. We deal with that whole situation on the album on a song called “Shorty Wanna be A Gangsta,” just asking people what’s really gangsta? Is it the folks that’s out here in these streets that will shoot you over this crack rock, or is it the muthaf**ka that’ll sit up in a house and send bombs and s**t and kill your whole family, then take your oil and then tell everybody you a terrorist…what’s really gangsta? Or these other folks out here like Enron who can steal 300 and 400 million dollars and the folks still walking around here out of jail. It ain’t gangsta when you got a gun, it’s gangsta when you can destroy a persons whole way of life.
AllHipHop.com: In reference to getting Bush out of office, could the minority community’s even unite to mount such and effort?
Big Gipp: I think so, but what you gotta understand is that the next person who gets in office might not be there long. It’s almost time for another assignation.
AllHipHop.com: Wow.
Big Gipp: That’s as real as I can give you, that the climate is setting up for another assignation because of the way the cards are falling right now. The Bush family is gone have to do something to stay in power, it’s something that’s gone have to happen to somebody that they feel is powerful enough to take them out of their position.
AllHipHop.com: Are you gonna vote?
Big Gipp: Yeah, probably for that Kerry guy. Democrats to me just a lot safer then them republicans any day folk. Them what I call crackers man, them crackers folk. Them crackers don’t give a damn about none of us folk. Them crackers about keeping they people and they family in power and f**k black folk, f**k Hispanics and f**k all us. And ya know, white folks is becoming the minority, so the only thing they got is they power, they money, and they f**king property. But at the end of the day in man power, oh they short as macaroni man.
AllHipHop.com: What would Big Gipp do you were elected president?
Big Gipp: [Long pause] Uhh, If I was elected president, man first of all…the only thing I would change about the United States is that I would give everybody education for free man. Then it wouldn’t be nobody’s excuse why they couldn’t make it. To a certain degree I can’t fault a dude that came up around nothing and had nobody really to teach them. I got sympathy for a person who comes up and may get caught up in an situation they may cost them for the rest of they life, but they was just trying to survive folk. And once you get into the system, if you ain’t got no money you damn sure ain’t gone get no help. Education for me would be biggest thing because if somebody could go to school free, I thing a lot of people who you think wouldn’t even f**k wit school would f**k wit school because they wouldn’t have that burden of having to pay so much money to learn something to make they life better.
AllHipHop.com: But a study I just saw on CNN was talking about the declining high school graduation rates of African-Americans and Hispanics, don’t we have to get our folks out of high school first?
Big Gipp: That s**t set up for us not a win anyway, the SATs ain’t got s**t to do with us. The s**t that be on them test, ain’t the way we live in our households, maybe in the white Americans household, but that s**t is just not balanced. On the other hand, we starting to figure out that we can make money out side of that system. Since the creation of hip hop, think about how many people got jobs from our generation that ain’t got nothing to do with corporate America. We have created our own system and our own way of getting money even when they say rap ain’t an art form. But now you got to respect the journalist that come from the rap scene, you got to respect everybody. You got Queen Latifah getting nominated for Academy’s, you got Puffy…I mean Puffy has integrated rap, he’s made it cool for white people to f**k with rap music.
Some people may take the way I talk as being racist, but it’s not racist, it’s just letting people know that you not gone blind me with all that other bulls**t, because where I came up white folks will still tell you, ‘ya’ll over there, and we over here.’ So for me, Atlanta will never be like New York, it will never be like L.A., how everybody just get together and kick it and throw on them fake ass smiles and act like it’s all cool. We just don’t do it that way, we just be like ‘s**t ya’ll do ya’ll, and we do us.’
AllHipHop.com: Let’s talk about the album.
Big Gipp: Yeah, let’s talk about One Monkey Don’t Stop Now Show.
AllHipHop.com: What’s up with that title?
Big Gipp: One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show is a saying that the old folks use to say in the south and it simply means if somebody don’t play with you, then you play by yourself, if somebody and down with what you believe in, you do it by yourself. And at the same time, the title means you ain’t suppose to hate nobody cause they don’t what to do it your way. We can’t let one person stop our whole show, cause if one person can stop your ship, than your ship wasn’t strong enough to be floating no way. People coming at us like ‘Yo Cee not in the group, I don’t know if ya’ll gona be able to do it,’ man it’s like get the f**k up out my face wit that s**t man. What the f**k wrong wit you, I’m the elder in this group, I was doing this s**t before Cee-Lo knew me. I love L.A. Reid to death, but see what you gotta understand with Goodie Mob, they be trying to destroy Goodie Mob since the first album dawg, Arista never f**ked with Goodie Mob.
Big Gipp: Clive Davis and em thought we talked too much, they thought we talked to political in the music, so Arista never will messed with Goodie Mob. And every time Goodie Mob came they use to f**k with our records, ‘okay “Cell Therapy” come out we got banned from MTV cause we racist, “Soul Food” come out, the damn tobacso company claim we using they cot damn logo. They kept attacking us on all different fronts dawg. So once we come with World Party, Cee-Lo for some reason after we recorded the album was like ‘yo dawg, I don’t like the album I don’t wanna perform.’ So I’m not trippin, I can’t get mad at him for feeling like that cause that was his opinion.
AllHipHop.com: Right, I see.
Big Gipp: But if you listen to World Party, Cee-Lo’s on damn near every hook, he wrote em. He decided not to be in the group, he decided not to go out on the road, not us. And for people to be thinking like if one man not in the group, the group is not the same, that cot damn angers me. I’m like hold the f**k up, it’s been four dudes since you seen the group, four dudes who was doing this s**t in NY with Outkast letting people first see southern rap, it was four of us, not one. And then, we out here hustling, and my dude Khujo got into a car accident, he loose one of his legs, we wake up in the morning and our record label drops us. We like what the f**k, we sell 2-3 million records and you drop us cause my dude have an accident. And then Arista come at me like, okay we’re not gona worry about Goodie Mob for a little bit, we’re just gona focus on Gipp and Cee-Lo. Naw, I seen "Five Heart Beats," I wouldn’t gona let ya’ll do me like that, I wasn’t about to go for that s**t. Plain and simple, One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show is about to be the hardest record to hit since Outkast last record, cause ain’t nobody gone say the things that we gone say to these folk. We gone show you this time, that we can do an album full of harmony, full of messages, we can do an album full of new innovative s**t without Cee-Lo…and we ain’t diss Cee not one time.