Album Reviews

Year Of The Gentlemen | Ne-Yo

By Nirav ⋅ September 25, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

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I spent a good time debating whether or not Ne-Yo is an obnoxious artist or not. My reasons against him being were that he’s popular (produced pop-type music), he does teeny bopper live showcases (along with Pretty Ricky, Chris Brown, etc), and his music videos are generally like everyone else(ex. 1/4 dressed women in the pool). That makes him sound like every other R&B or pop star out there. But then in comparison to those attributes, he also has an overwhelming amount of quality attributes. A few being that he has an amazingly talented set of vocals, he actually writes quality and smart lyrics for all his songs and other artists, he creates albums without very many collaborations and still managed to sell, and he doesn’t seem to overdo it when it comes to dealing with popular media.

To me, Ne-Yo fits into the bill of very talented R&B artists who still maintain to keep it conscious and smart when it comes to producing their music and lyrics. He reminds me of where R&B first started, the good ol’ simple days of the genre. Year of the Gentlemen (2008) follows along the path of Ne-Yo’s first album but with more simplicity, smarter lyrics, and definitely a growth his vocal range. 

Let me breakdown why I think Ne-Yo is helping to redefine the genre of R&B in an obnoxious way:

• Lyrics are dead simple: Ne-Yo uses straight terms. Though he gets a few metaphors into his stanza’s, he mostly tells it how it is. There’s no additional fluff and nothing to make him sound like he’s smarter or more profound. And that works for him. In Why Does She Stay he states in his first line, “She hates that I don’t do dishes, even though I mess up the most. And she begs me all the time to help her, I know I should but I’m lazy so I don’t.” This simplicity actually helps set the mood for the overall theme and allows people to get sucked into the song from the start.
• Lyrics are smart: I can’t say Ne-Yo has “conscious” lyrics, but they are definitely way better and smarter than what you hear from other artists. His songs are never about heart break and just wallowing through it. He instead talks about the flip side of getting through it and also about the great times when you’re in a relationship. And it’s done in a way that’s getting past just complaining or just talking about it. It’s in the middle of regular lyrics and conscious lyrics in my book. 
• Voice with depth: Compared to other popular artists in his genre like T-Pain and Akon, Ne-Yo does not have his voice synthesized through a machine. He actually can sing and has a pretty wide range of notes he goes through in his songs. His voice has definitely gotten better since In My Own Words (2006).
• Little or no collaborations for albums: Its rare to find artists going solo on their album releases. That means little to no collaborations on the official track list. With Ne-Yo, he’s released two back to back albums with barely any collaboration partners. He keeps his albums to show off his skills. And he uses the collaborations for singles and mixtapes. I like that!
• No direct sex talk: I hate when artists get dirty and grimy about sex. Sex is a beautiful subject and not meant to be a objectified like hundreds of other artists do. Ne-Yo maintains a level of discretion here and I appreciate that. Though his videos might speak differently, atleast his songs keep it real. 

Dan has a way of saying to me, “you’re the lyrics man” that gets me thinking of how important I feel about them whether they’re used in hip hop, soul, r&b, or rock. It’s easy to forget how important they are since many times you’re just dancing to the music or just listening to it while doing something else (studying, playing games, eating, etc). But for most people, they are singing along unconsciously. And even though they don’t mean implying anything bad or not them by singing along, they unconsciously get placed into a trap of stupid words. Stupid words clunked together with more stupid words that form a retarded paragraph/stanza. 

So if you’re looking for a start into “smart” lyrics which you can still sing along with but not get yourself into becoming a zombie, then Ne-Yo is here to save you. His music is catchy and you can definitely sing along with it. But its “smart” and it has something to say.

Tags: hip hop, r&b, soul