40: Goodie Mob - Cell Therapy (LaFace. 1995. From the LP Soul Food)
Mike Dikk: “Cell Therapy” was brought back to my attention by this list. I saw the video a few times when the song first came out, and I liked it. It was like some kind of mutated Geto Boys thing, except I may have thought that because The Goodie Mobb also consisted of two regular-sized guys and one not so regular-sized guy. At least I compared them to The Geto boys and not Too Much Trouble.
After rediscovering the brilliance of “Cell Therapy”, I was prompted to acquire the entire Soul Food LP. Now, I feel like a total schmuck for sleeping on this record for so long. I hate to be one of those guys that just discovers something for the first time that everyone else has known about for the last ten years, and all they do is talk about how brilliant it is, like it’s some kind of brand new development no one else figured out, so I’m going to try and refrain from doing that, but it’s hard for me to fight back that urge.
The song “Cell Therapy” is some serious Grade A lyrical knowledge. These dudes can GO. Or at least, could go. The individual members of the Goodie Mobb are definitely now on extremely different plateaus of fame, but this song, along with the album, are now things I deem essential, which means you should rush out right now and buy them. Honestly, the song is rather depressing, but it gets the point across that these dudes know the deal, and they are going to tell you the deal whether you want to know about it or not. The younger folks would call this “real talk”, and "Cell Therapy" is real talk at its Rillest.
I also remember finding that Khujo guy pretty scary looking when I first saw the video, and that whole “Who’s that peekin’ in my window?” chorus really tripped me out the first time I heard it. I’m glad I finally caught up with the rest of the world and listened to the rest of the lyrics to see exactly what these guys were so paranoid about.
Raven Mack: When this shit came out, I was sold. Hearing some gold-tooth paranoid-assed brothers rap about mark of the beast tattoos and black helicopters was a bridge between two gaps in my personality. I shopped at a bookstore - I think it was called American Opinion or something like that - in Richmond, which was run by an old dude who was part of the John Birch Society, and you could buy back issues of The New American for a dollar each, and after a few visits, old dude trusted me enough to invite me to a back room screening of some Bilderberg expose film or something or other. And this was all fine and great. Except John Birch Society has a certain amount of racism to it, meaning they hate everybody who's not white and at least mostly worried about the same things they're worried about. It's like Klan-lite almost sometimes. Well, I was never one to be too segregated in my life, mostly out of environment and not so much because of some stupid moral purpose in my life. And I have always overly-idolized rap culture, mostly because of the rock star aspect of it. I mean, who else could rock some goofy-looking gold teeth and make it look awesomer than Penthouse Forum experiences before breakfast time? Only crazy rappers. (See Johnny Dang, or Paul Wall, or google image search "white girl" and "gold teeth", but you may want to filter the results if you're at work.) Well, this shit was a combo double dropkick tag team of shit I loved and spoke at me. The crazy thing is hearing Cee-lo and how awesome he was with his retarded band kid voice, and then getting the CD, as well as the "Soul Food" 12-inch single (which I still have, unless I sold it on ebay and don't remember, which would suck), and it was some great ass shit. I was actually sad when they kind of went their separate ways. The Still Standing CD wasn't the greatest, but I think it's overall underrated, because it's not as bad as it's made out to be because of that stupid "they don't dance no mo'" song that was the single off it. And really, it's hard to believe, stepping back, that one of the guys on "Cell Therapy" is the same guy singing on Gnarls Barkley "Crazy", not because he sounds different that much, but because it's hard to believe mother-in-law NPR types, no matter how liberal and open-minded they claim to be, being down with something like "Cell Therapy". This is also why rap used to be the new rock-n-roll, and also why rap sucks now. I wish the new rap meaning the new rock-n-roll meaning the new flapper bathing suit showing scantily-covered kneebones would hurry the fuck up and get here though.
Download: Goodie Mob - Cell Therapy
Watch the video:
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