Although respected individually for their eclectic contributions to hip-hop, no one was ready for what Georgia's own Cee Lo Green and Danger Mouse had to offer collectively as Gnarls Barkley -- the catchy, gospel, punk rock & roll monster currently making history on the UK Charts. SOHH recently sat down separately with the duo to discuss their odd partnership, the unusual recording process behind their debut album, St. Elsewhere, and exactly who this Gnarls Barkley character is.

In part two, GQ Magazine's "Man of the Year," Danger Mouse, explains how he created the Gnarls sound, why he doesn't want everyone to like the record and what's on his plate for the future.

SOHH: Who exactly is Gnarls Barkley?

Danger Mouse: Who exactly...it's something or someone that developed out of the work of myself and Cee Lo Green. We started working together and what we came up with started to have a sound to it and its own kind of identity. So the name came about and the name can be singular or plural, or it can be a group or a person. It's just something that came about on it's own really.

SOHH: So it's not like an alias like how MF DOOM has all these aliases?

DM: No, no it's not that, I've seen that kind of written before. It's not really an alias as much as kind of like, it's the sum of the two of us, because the two of us, when we did our thing together, it didn't really just sound like Danger Mouse and Cee Lo, because it doesn't sound like that much of either one of what we've done before, it just sounded like something completely new. And so it needed its own name. And the name itself could be a group name; it could be a singular name. It's just, we like the name itself and that's what we wound up using.

SOHH: So how do you think that name correlates to the sound?

DM: Well it doesn't... I don't know. There's something familiar about it and I don't know. We didn't really think too much about it, we didn't spend that much, trust me with all the stuff we went through and did to make the record, the name was a very small element to what we were doing.

SOHH: So how did you and Cee Lo meet?

DM: We met back in 2003. I did the Danger Mouse & Jemini record and we were doing a remix, and he's on the remix. We met then in Atlanta and so after the remix was done, after we finished doing that in the studio I played him some other music, some new stuff I was doing, he was really into it. I think he wanted some tracks, some of the tracks that I played him, and I kinda wanted... I prefer to do albums with people so he immediately was like let's do an album then. So I was like ok, so we started on it then, and this was in a couple of years ago, 2 ½ years ago, so it was before The Grey Album or anything like that. You know I had just started working with MF DOOM right around the same time so I had started on the Danger Doom and Gnarls Barkley before The Grey Album or the Gorillaz or anything.

SOHH: So what was it like working with Cee Lo in comparison to Jemini or DOOM or the Gorillaz?

DM: Some parts of it were similar, some were different. Me and him are both independent. We didn't really discuss the music that much. We each did what we did and just tried it out. It just took a lot longer and we spent a lot of time when we were in the studio just doing the actual recording and then after that it was really just seeing what worked and what didn't. It was different because I guess what he does is different than other people. I'd say the closest comparison from what I've done in the past is probably Jemini.

SOHH: How so?

DM: Well cause Jemini sings and he raps and he's very independent himself as well and he's extremely talented too, so it was like I had that trust with him where I just would give him the tracks and he would just do what he did and that was very similar with Cee Lo. Like I would do the songs but knowing that he was gonna sing on everything but the the chord progressions, and the equipment, and the music part of it itself was more important when I was giving stuff to Cee Lo than anything that I've done before, I guess with DOOM or anything like that.

SOHH: So you knew he was gonna sing on it, as soon as you guys started working together?

DM: For the most part I assumed he was once we got started. I didn't know right at first, but after the first couple of tracks I started to assume he was going to.

SOHH: So you didn't have a set plan like, we're gonna do one rap song, we're gonna do a Violent Femmes cover or was it more like you stumbled upon a sound?

DM: No that's the thing. I was trying to come up with the tracks that would be different from anything that he had heard and keep him interested in the project, and keep him on his toes really, not knowing what he was going to do with them - or if he could do anything with them really. Really just trying to do as much as I could to kind of still sound different, and for it to be something that got him excited and that's how I did it. And songs, structure wise, style wise, and ultimately what the subject matter was, none of that was really delivered at all. We didn't say we needed a fast song, a slow song, a girl song, this song, that party song, we didn't do anything like that. It was just what ever he felt the music was there, telling him, you know bringing reactions out of him was what he did really and we didn't discuss anything like that. In getting to know each other we definitely brought up a lot of the subject matters that wound up being in the songs but that wasn't intentional either. I never knew he was gonna put any of that stuff in the music until after it happened.

SOHH: I actually spoke to Cee Lo a couple of weeks ago and he said the same thing. He said basically you would send him the tracks and he would be so impressed that he would try to return the favor, keep you on your toes when he sent the track back to you.

DM: Oh he did. And I was like well ok. And if anything with so much of the stuff we were doing it wasn't really sitting around thinking is it good. I liked my part of it and I just always had to think did I like what he did like yeah since we didn't really have the much to relate with it as far as the sound was concerned the whole idea was how to compare it to this or that was really kind of irrelevant so we just did it and moved on and never thinking that this many people would hear the record. Not even having to worry about that really.