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There are many shades to CeeLo Green.

The flashy hip-hop root of Goodie Mob.
The quirky soul-funk maestro in Gnarls Barkley.
The pop culture-loving music fan who steeped his Las Vegas residencies in classics from Culture Club and INXS.
But for his fifth non-holiday studio album, “CeeLo Green Is Thomas Callaway,” the Atlanta native isn’t only spotlighting his birth name, but revealing the authentic R&B musician behind what sometimes comes across as a caricature.
Recorded last fall in Nashville, the album, available June 26, benefits from the tutelage of Dan Auerbach, guitarist and singer for The Black Keys.
Their knowledge of each other stretches back years, first through Green’s Gnarls Barkley partner Danger Mouse (aka Athens’ Brian Burton), who produced several of The Black Keys’ albums, and more recently when both Green and The Black Keys performed on the British music-variety show, “Later…with Jools Holland.”
“I was hanging out with him backstage, and he was like, ‘When are you going to produce my record?’” Auerbach said with a laugh from his Nashville studio. “So, I guess as soon as I was ready, I reached out to him.”
Indeed, as Green tells the story of how “… Thomas Callaway” manifested, there was both an immediate comfort level with Auerbach and a tremendous amount of trust.
Green, 45, had frequently traveled to Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio to write with the musician — they wrote the dozen songs on the album together — but Green was surprised on one visit that he assumed would be another writing session. Instead, a room full of veteran studio musicians, many from Alabama’s famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studio as well as Memphis, greeted him, along with Auerbach and his lead engineer, fellow Atlantan Allen Parker.
It was time to record. And for Green, it was his first time ever recording with a full band.