Gorillaz is the debut album by the British virtual band Gorillaz, released in March 2001. It includes the singles "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000", "Rock the House" and "Tomorrow Comes Today". The album reached number 3 in the UK, and was an unexpected hit in the U.S., hitting number 14 and selling over ten million copies worldwide.
Throughout the album the band experiments with many combinations of genres, including hip hop, rock, Latin, punk, dub, acid jazz, and reggae. The beginning of the song "M1 A1" features a successive sound clip from the movie Day of the Dead. The song "Dracula" features sound clips from Merrie Melodies' Transylvania 6-5000. The song "Slow Country" features a sample from The Specials' 1981 single "Ghost Town". A sampled loop from "In the Hall of the Mountain Queen" by Raymond Scott is repeated throughout the song "Man Research (Clapper)". The song's title is a nod to Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research.
It was recently revealed that the track "Starshine" has an alternate version, which features Luton-based rap group Phi Life Cypher. This version is not available on any releases, but it is available on the Phi Life Cypher SoundCloud channel and also on the video-sharing website YouTube.
All editions of the Gorillaz album feature an enhanced section that included screen savers, wallpaper and an autoplay, featuring a short movie which opens the user's internet browser to a special section of the Gorillaz website, http://murdocswinnebago.com, which gives the user full access to Murdoc's winnebago.
In 2004, the album was packaged with 2002's Laika Come Home in a limited edition box set as part of EMI's "2CD Originals" collection. Other songs saw a release such as the reggae-dub song: "Dub Dumb" which features British-Jamaican artist Sweetie Irie; it is available on the PlayStation 2 game MTV Music Generator 2 rather than on G Sides or the album itself. Other tracks include "Gor Beaten", which was another track that didn't make the album, however, it was available on one of the Gorillaz' members computers in Kong Studios.