Cee-Lo Green Says He Pulled A Gun On His Ex-Manager In His New Memoir

Cee Lo Green is ready to declare the first feud of the upcoming season of “The Voice.”

“Everybody wants to see Blake lose, so we are going to be ganging up on him,” says Green, who’s returning to the NBC singing competition Sept. 23 after a year’s sabbatical.

Country boy Blake Shelton has been the winning coach on three of the four seasons of “The Voice” so far.

Green, 39, won’t disclose strategy, but he’s far more forthcoming about other things in his new memoir, “Everybody’s Brother,” available Tuesday. He journeys the long road to stardom starting from the hip-hop/soul scene in Atlanta.

Shelton can at least be grateful that this time Green won’t be carrying heat. In the book, Green writes about pulling a gun on a manager of his first group, Goodie Mob, who he accused of shortchanging him on a deal. The two were on the tour bus at the time.

“To be blunt, I did have a MAC-11. I just owned it and happened to have it on me,” he explains. “He did make the mistake of starting an argument with a person who was carrying a weapon.

“I didn’t kill him,” he adds sweetly.

Green, born Thomas DeCarlo Callaway, was the son of a preacher man who never married his mother, Sheila J. Tyler-Callaway. Life with her was a roller-coaster ride of financial highs and lows. Green spent a lot of time living with his grandmother growing up.

Back then, it wasn’t easy being Green.

“My body was too short, my head was too big, I was strange, and I dressed different,” he writes.

He also confesses, “At an age when other kids might be out selling lemonade, I stole my ass off.”

He’d “intimidate” people out of their Air Jordans, jewelry and any other valuables they had on them. Crime paid, and despite a few arrests, he kept returning to the bank.

“People who are brilliant-minded need a creative outlet. ... To feel endowed enough to take something from somebody is very empowering,” he explains. “If you can take it, it becomes very easy. Crime is art for lazy people.”

The criminal impulse faded when he fell in with Dungeon Family, the rap collective of Atlanta hip-hop artists, including Outkast and Goodie Mob. Green put out two albums with Goodie before the confrontation with the manager, after which he quit the tour.

Lean years followed when he didn’t know where his “next 20 grand was coming from.” He was married, had a son, Kingston, in 2000, and divorced in 2005. Then along came the 2006 hit “Crazy,” a collaboration between Green and Danger Mouse, together known as Gnarls Barkley.

Green and Mouse had their own falling out about where credit was due for “Crazy.” The “Voice” coach felt that Mouse was taking too much.

“He liked the notion that some people felt he was completely responsible,” says Green.

Solo again, Green released his third album, “The Lady Killer,” in 2010, containing the viral sensation “F--- You” that was introduced on You Tube. He and Gwyneth Paltrow memorably performed the sanitized version, “Forget You,” on the Grammys. Green, who claims Elton John as his style idol, was dressed in a high-voltage chicken outfit.

More fame came when he joined “The Voice,” alongside Shelton, Christina Aguilera and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, as a judge. The show was a certified hit, but when producers introduced the notion of cycling judges in and out last season, Green volunteered to take a sabbatical.

“It had become a job, a routine, a regimen, and that was rubbing me the wrong way,” he says.

Green developed a glam and glitter revue, “Loberace,” for Las Vegas, a city he loves for its “strangely unique and talented people.

“I mean, who wakes up in the morning and realizes they are a contortionist,” he laughs.

Now on good terms with the rest of Goodie Mob, the group recently released the reunion album “Age Against the Machine.” And Season 5 of “The Voice” starts in about two weeks. Green says he’s perfectly fine being one of the judges who’s yet to coach a winner.

“I have a very unassuming quality,” he laughs. “That’s on purpose.

“I just love to be underestimated.”





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