Stop me if you've heard this one before.

OutKast is the greatest band on the planet right now, and if you don't believe me, you're missing something. I admit, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below was pretty spotty, and I can certainly think of albums more deserving of the Grammy than those unstoppably funky gentlemen won for themselves back in February. But thank God it was OutKast and not, like, Evanescence; even if you couldn't dig on everything the group was doing, OutKast has still pushed music (not just rap) further than anybody in a long time.

If there's one glaring flaw with Andre 3000's half, The Love Below, it's that it occasionally oversteps its reach; he's a good singer, but not a great one, and his musical ideas can occasionally seem overly ambitious or too strange. I still love the record, but there are moments (the chorus of "Roses," the ad-libs on "Prototype") where I wish someone else were handling the vocal duties.

This is where Cee-Lo comes in.

Cee-Lo was almost the third member of OutKast, and I can't be alone in thinking he should've been. He was always way too good for Goodie Mob (even back when it made decent records), and his slight-stature soul-God persona would've fit in way better with the hypercreative Dre and Big Boi than, you know, T-Mo and Big Gipp. He's crazy. And I'm convinced he's a genius.

What I'm not convinced of, however, is that Cee-Lo Green ... Is the Soul Machine is a very good album. I want to like it. I really do. But Cee-Lo makes it pretty hard.

Soul Machine starts out good enough; the first five tracks are all amazing, even if Pharrell doesn't think we'll notice that he did the same thing on "The Art of Noise" that he does on Snoop's "Beautiful." But when Cee-Lo breaks off into an Al Green-style vocal run 30 seconds into "Art of Noise," it really makes you wonder. This cat can really sing. Why does he feel the need to make just another Southern rap album?

Because, really, that's all Soul Machine ends up as after the first few cuts. Stuttering beats, too-fast vocals, a lot of direction-less violence and, of course, plenty of unremarkable cameos. One listen to his voice, and you can tell Cee-Lo knows what good soul music is. So why doesn't he show it? The other Pharrell cut isn't bad, and a couple of songs lift directly from The Chronic so much that they could almost be rip-offs, but, really, believe me when I tell you the last half of this record is aimless.

I wish Cee-Lo had taken notes from his pal Andre. If he'd lived up to the very obvious potential of the ambitious first third of So ul Machine (or his even better "Closet Freak" from his first record), he might've found himself dressing up on Grammy night, too. He's clearly smart and soulful enough to make a great album someday. But as long as he keeps playing it this safe, he'll be just another good singer with potential, trailing behind his visionary peers.

What're you afraid of, Cee-Lo?

The Love Below?