Profanity goes a long way as explicit Cee-Lo music video goes viral on YouTube

Cee-Lo’s vitriolic video on YouTube goes viral

NEW YORK — A catchy but expletive-laden new song from Cee-Lo has quickly gone viral.

The title includes an expletive but racked up more than 1.8 million views by Tuesday afternoon after being posted last week on Cee-Lo’s YouTube page.

Cee-Lo is best known as half of the duo Gnarls Barkley. The video is merely a colorful stream of the song’s lyrics but has created a stir nonetheless.

The song bounces to an up-tempo, ’50s soul beat, but the lyrics are a message to a gold-digging ex-girlfriend. A clean version has played on British radio with the words “forget you” substituted.

Cee-Lo tweeted that “a bit of history” had been made with the song and that he was “amazed.” It has already spawned mash-up videos and a response featuring 50 Cent.

Cee-Lo has promised a full video ahead of his solo album, “The Ladykiller,” due out this year.