RIFF MARKET

ANYTHING ELSE WOULD BE UNCIVILIZED

Download: "Smiley Faces"

Granted the Dangermouse/Cee-Lo project Gnarls Barkley has had its curious marketing push--untitled songs leaking, the crypto-major Downtown Records putting out the LP, the born-of-internet stay-in-internet commercial success of "Crazy" over in the UK, the clown-prince hipster band name and the inevitable Right Guard sponsorship--but what did they do to deserve this?:

Gnarls is exactly the sort of oppressively post modern project gimmick you’d expect from producer Danger Mouse, an artist who made a name for himself by turning one bad gimmick into an even worse album while simultaneously helping to spark an internationally obnoxious buzzword/phenomenon. He is a grown man who dresses up like a giant mouse for publicity photos and in the last year has released not one, but two albums with prominent vocals from cartoon characters. He also has a rather shameful history of making crummy electronic music.

There's also a pretty great line about a "rap Seth McFarlane"; anybody who took his girlfriend to see Spawn in the theaters knows what I'm getting at. Either way the guy who wrote this is the dude Noz from Cocaine Blunts, a blog about rap music. He's typically not this vitriolic so I'm wondering what got him so fired up. Here are the theories floating around:

1. Noz reaches out to Dangermouse via e-mail, just a 'what's up' or a 'hey i really like your post modern projects' or a 'it's so awesome you're a grown man who dresses like a giant mouse' etc. At the end Noz says he really likes DM's blog, and casually mentions he himself runs the famous rap blog Cocaine Blunts. 'Send me some love!' jokes Noz, hoping for some danger-linkage. Instead Dangermouse records "Send Me Some Love," a 45-minute mashup between Wire's Send and Cee-Lo's face making fart sounds. Sometimes the farts sound like "nozzzzz"; double-platinum.

2. Dangermouse is on the internet, checking on his blog roll. He notices that Noz from Cocaine Blunts is not on it. This is OK with him.

3. Noz is checking his stats on sitemeter.com. He notices he got three hits from dangermouse44.blogspot.com, and all the sudden he's pretty fucking pumped. A while ago he had given up on Danger but maybe he had come around. Noz visits and sees just one post on dangermouse44.blogspot.com. It is a YouTube video of Dangermouse furiously printing out pages of Cocaine Blunts and Cee-Lo shredding the printouts very sensuously; both men are dressed as giant mice, dressed as Noz.

4. Both Cee-Lo and Dangermouse refused to join Noz's blogger-only a capella group, Vijay Sing.