Matos on Cee-Lo

Michaelangelo Matos, author of Vol.10 in the series, on Prince's Sign 'O' the Times, has a good piece up today at the Daily Beast, on the song of the moment, Cee-Lo's "Fuck You". (Although labeling it as such makes the song seem more fleeting than it is: I'm pretty sure this thing has some serious legs.)

An extract here:

That’s true of the music as well. R&B has tended to be the most consistently forward-looking of pop styles, but over the past few years it’s been bitten hard by the retro bug, as recent albums from Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, and Raphael Saadiq demonstrate. Sometimes referred to as “throwback,” this style emits a very different vibe from the “neo-soul” codified by D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, ’60s punchy rather than ’70s languid. It’s also become a comfortable go-to style for current artists—there’s a lot of it on the new Fantasia album, for example. Cee-Lo has utilized it plenty—Gnarls Barkley’s “Run,” from The Odd Couple, is a clear example—and “Fuck You” cements it in R&B’s modern firmament.

And a link to the whole article here.