Gorillaz Music Videos, Ringtones, Pictures and Photos including Feel Good Inc., Clint Eastwood Music Videos on Blastro

Gorillaz

The true nature of Gorillaz is a bit of a mystery. The four-piece band plays behind a carefully-constructed veil during live performances, purposefully obscuring their identities. Certified in 2001 by The Guinness Book of World Records as the Most Successful Virtual Band, the members of Gorillaz represent themselves on television and in music videos with four outrageous cartoon avatars - 2D, Noodle, Russel Hobbs, and Murdoc Niccals - with an equally colorful and intricate backstory involving drive-by shootings and demonic possessions in a dystopian version of New York City. Many elements of the band’s fictional history can be gleaned from their interactive website, a digital version of their cartoon recording studio, Kong Studios.

In reality, the chief driving force behind Gorillaz are two creative British entertainers, Damon Albam - former guitarist of britrock band Blur - and Jamie Hewlett, an independent comic book artist. The pair began recording the Gorillaz’s trippy, electronica-laced brand of alternative rap in as early as 1998, releasing the underground Tomorrow Comes Today EP in 2000. The critical success of their EP caught the attention of megalabel Virgin Records (Daft Punk, N*E*R*D), who dropped the band’s first full-length album Gorillaz in early 2001.

Gorillaz became a huge commercial success, with the band’s creative genre-bending art pop bolstered by their enigmatic animated image. The album reached the #3 spot in the United Kingdom and the #14 spot on the Billboard 200, selling well over six million copies worldwide. Standout tracks from the group’s first album include "Clint Eastwood" (which features a sample from classic 1996 western The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), "19-2000", and "Tomorrow Comes Today". Gorillaz features appearances by a number of artists, among them Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and Ibrahim Ferrer.