CeeLo Green unveiling ‘Loberace’

Perhaps it was preordained.

Consider the evidence. Or do you need any more than CeeLo Green decked out in mirror tile, crooning “Bein’ Green” with Kermit the Frog on a network TV talent show?

It’s not enough to say that Green belongs in Las Vegas, but that the retro-soul singer is bringing back an older era of Las Vegas.

The one where the headliners were not necessarily the stars who were currently on the radio. The ones who had a few hits of their own as a calling card, but were just as likely to perform the hits of others. Sometimes with green frogs.

On Wednesday, Green is “planting my flag in the city” with the unveiling of “Loberace” at Planet Hollywood Resort, a production show he plans to perform at least 28 times through April. He promises an over-the-top spectacle that’s roughly 60 percent covers of other people’s hits to about 40 percent music from his own career.

“Many people are discovering me for the first time,” says the 40-year-old singer.

Though he’s been in show business for nearly half his life, “I’ve really generated this new audience in the last three years. I would say the last five, but a lot of people still don’t realize I’m Gnarls Barkley.”

Yes, a man who has become nearly ubiquitous in American culture still has just a handful of hit songs people can name. And one of them, “Crazy,” was recorded under the Barkley handle shared by Green and producer Danger Mouse.

Fewer still tie the Atlanta native back to the Goodie Mob, the hip-hop outfit that represented part of the “Dirty South” movement of the ’90s. “To not evolve is ungodly,” he says.

And as record sales evaporate and singers realize the need to evolve into a more encompassing star power, few can keep up with Green. There he is at the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lighting. There he is outrunning paparazzi in a commercial for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

It turns out a signature hit or two built enough of a foundation for the CeeLo brand, which exploded with NBC’s talent show “The Voice” in the spring of 2011.

As a songwriter, the man born Thomas Callaway first found his compass aligned with Las Vegas in 2005, when an orphaned song he penned called “Don’t Cha” ended up being recorded by Robin Antin’s Pussycat Dolls, the burlesque troupe that had just opened a themed lounge at Caesars Palace that year.

But it would be another five years before Green’s name went mainstream in a big way. His third solo album “The Lady Killer” was propelled by the hit single released both as a clean version, “Forget You,” and the equally popular uncensored version.

A new single, “Only You,” featuring Lauriana Mae, keeps Green a credible contender in the retro-soul revival.

“I remind them of nostalgic things,” Green says of older fans who remember listening to a few radio stations, instead of hundreds of satellite and Internet sources dividing musical genres into fractions. “We should not be on islands away from each other,” he says. “And that’s as political as I get.”

Green says he didn’t wait for casino executives to eventually think of maybe bringing him to the Strip some day, but essentially lobbied for the job while keeping a high profile in club appearances.

“It took a little bit of my own ego and initiative to kind of propose it,” he says of the dates that ended up being produced by Green through his management company, Primary Wave, with Caesars Entertainment and the theater’s landlord, Base Entertainment.

“The allure was obvious,” he says.

At first a Las Vegas residency seemed to have a practical appeal as well, allowing him to commute from Los Angeles and still hold down his job on “The Voice.” Ultimately, he ended up sitting out this spring season of the talent show.

Beyond the practical, Las Vegas is a city that will “allow me to be myself,” he says.

That would be an old-school showman. “I am attached to all things timeless,” he says, reeling off inspirations with evangelical fervor, not just the obvious ones such as Liberace and Elton John, but “big, brave personalities” as obscure as Arthur Brown, who was known as much for his stage costumes and antics as much as for his one hit, “Fire.”

“I am an embodiment of all those great things that go unsung,” he says of the “uniquely bizarre and brilliant” breed of showmen and pure entertainers. “I’ve got the want, the need, the desire. It’s born in me. I’m cut from those guys and I’m ready to grow it off.”

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.