NE-YO [08.10.08]
JACKSON UNITED
Ne-Yo is unquestionably one the industry's biggest stars right now. As a songwriter he's arguably the most in-demand talent in the R&B and pop industry, already penning a string of hits for the likes of Beyoncé, Rihanna and Chris Brown.
As a solo artist - in the short space of less than three years - he's racked up hit after hit around the globe, and with his new album ‘Year Of The Gentleman’ he has notched up his third studio album.
The first single from ‘Year Of ...’, ‘Closer’ has been a huge success for the 28-year-old artist; it's also been a brave release, proving that Ne-Yo is far from being just the new version of 90s singer/producer R. Kelly. Whilst R&B these days has been so heavily influenced by laidback hip hop elements, ‘Closer’ picks up the pace with a UK dance influence taking Ne-Yo into new territory, opening up his international audience in the process.
“I was a little worried in the very beginning, mainly in the US because change is kinda difficult there - they see you do one thing, they usually want you to do that one thing,” says the polite and amiable smooth-operator.
“It doesn't matter that you do four other things, if they like the one thing that's where they want you to stay. When we dropped 'Closer' it took my US crowd a little bit of time to grasp what I was trying to do. The UK picked it up instantly, which I expected since the song was inspired by the UK. Now that the album is out and people are understanding what it is I'm trying to do, things are going really well, and so I'm happy about that.”
There's no doubt his career is flying high right now, which means he's working back-to-back on a series of projects, including his own. In essence, he's the definition of a workaholic.
“I've been called a workaholic before - guilty as charged,” he concedes. “It's mainly because I don't view what I do as work. This music thing is fun for me - this is something that I do in my spare time even when I'm not working. You normally find me at the studio just because I enjoy this. I always reference it to taking a bunch of kids and paying them to play video games - that's pretty much what it's like with me and music. I have enough material to do two albums a year if I wanted to; of course I wouldn't do that because I don't want people to get tired of me. I enjoy what I do so it's hard to view it like work.”
‘Year Of The Gentleman’ is a collection of melodic and soulful songs - most of them pleasant and pretty enough in design. Highlights on the album include the dance-soaked first single ‘Closer’, the Ne-Yo-branded beat-ballad soul of ‘Single’ and ‘Miss Independent’, and the Michael Jackson-esque (circa 1979) funky floorfiller ‘Nobody’.
“On every album I try to do one song to pay homage to one of the men who is responsible for the reason why I do this - and that is Michael Jackson. That song is basically me paying homage to Michael Jackson.”
Speaking of Michael Jackson, it's interesting to note that Ne-Yo has actually been working with Jackson on material for the singer's forthcoming new album. Does Ne-Yo feel like he could truly control Jackson on the new material and push him in the direction he needs to go, as opposed to the direction Jackson wants to go?
“I don't know… as far as the control issue is concerned I really don't think there will be one because he's pretty much in the same place that I am, in so far as what I would like to hear from Michael Jackson. It's been a while for him, so he's more likely to listen to somebody who's currently in the scene and is doing relatively well at it, than to say, 'I'm Michael Jackson, and I'm gonna do it the way I wanna do it'. I don't think there should be problem with any of that. He's cool.”
Sasha Perera
‘Year of the Gentlemen’ is out now thru Universal Music.
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