NE-YO WAS THWARTED BY THE PANDEMIC, INDUSTRY INSECURITY, AND MORE — BUT HE’S BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER AFTER A 4-YEAR HIATUS WITH HIS CONFESSIONAL NEW ALBUM, SELF-EXPLANATORY.
BY LAURA SCHREFFLER
PHOTOGRAPHY JIMMY FONTAINE

Photo Credit: Jimmy Fontaine
FOR MOST OF US, IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE. For Ne-Yo, at this moment in time, it’s a jungle gym.
The 42-year-old, three-time Grammy winner is talking to me from Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, where he’s taken his kids for a pre-Memorial Day outing. They’re going rogue on the monkey bars while he, in turn, is talking about tackling a different kind of beast: the imminent July 15th release of his eighth studio album, Self-Explanatory.
The title, he says, speaks for itself. But the reason for a 4-year wait between this album and his last, 2018’s Good Man, well, that’s a little more complicated.
“I started this album in 2018, and I was moving through it a little more slowly than normal. It was taking me some time to get things going because I was really trying to figure out where I fit into the industry now — I’m not going to lie.”
This existential crisis was only temporary, however. He finally realized that, as a true artist, the point was never just to make money: It was to make art. “I’ve never been in this business just for the sake of selling records; that’s not my job. I had to remind myself of the reasons I fell in love with music in the first place and not worry about where the album was going to fall — be it urban radio or pop radio — that nothing else really matters when it comes down to the creation of art.”
His album was sidelined, though, for a more basic reason as well — the same reason that derailed everyone else’s life for the past many years: Covid-19. “The pandemic really threw a monkey wrench in everything, for everybody — myself included,” he admits. “I wasn’t doing a lot of recording at the time because I was just trying to figure out what the hell was actually going on. It was a moment.”
A particularly uninspiring one at that. Ne-Yo, née Shaffer Chimere Smith, felt no desire whatsoever to get off the couch and start recording. “I wasn’t inspired at all, no,” he confesses. “I gained a little weight, weight that I’m still blaming on the quarantine and still trying to get off. I was three years vegan when Covid started, but I had to let go of that because I was like, ‘Listen, if I’m going to die tomorrow, I’m going to have a burger. Sorry, but leave me alone.’ I wasn’t inspired to write because I was just terrified. What’s going to happen to me, to my kids? I was in a dark place.”
And last, but integral, he was having problems at home. “My wife and I weren’t in the best place, either,” he confides.
All in all, it wasn’t a recipe for success. “With all the other albums I’ve done before, I didn’t have to deal with a pandemic, I didn’t have to deal with being 42 and coming back into this game feeling almost like a new artist, being back out there again for the first time in a long while. So, it took a minute for me to get back into the swing of things, back into realizing that the world is not about to crumble into dust and float off into space, that the sun is probably going to come out tomorrow — so maybe we should finish this album. I didn’t start recording again until mid-2021, but by the grace of God, it’s officially done.”
Ironically, putting pen to paper and turning his struggles — particularly those with his partner of seven years, Crystal Williams — into song not only proved cathartic but also made for some pretty rad music, including Self-Explanatory’s first single, “Don’t Love Me.”
In fact, according to Ne-Yo, the track started out as an open letter to his wife. In the song, he cautions her that he’s not in the right headspace to be in a healthy relationship, that she deserves someone who will treat her better, that because “Lying to your face done got, too easy for me to not /Even though I love you a lot / All I’m a wind up doin’ is making you hate me… /And I really wanna see you happy.”
Yet, everything happens for a reason, and confronting their issues head-on when the pandemic forced them together proved to be the best thing possible, personally, professionally, and musically. “We were forced to sit in each other’s faces and talk about things we wouldn’t have talked about otherwise, and really and truly figure out a way to navigate ourselves back to what it is we wanted to be together as a couple. I mean, everybody says that relationships are hard, but this was a whole new level of that, being forced to sit around and talk about the things that are uncomfortable. Being painfully honest with somebody about everything is not easy, especially because you have to turn that finger that you’ve been pointing at everybody else around on yourself and realize that you’ve made absolute mistakes before, and these mistakes have become detrimental to your situation. Having to admit that to yourself is never an easy thing. It is, however, inspiring… and it makes for great song lyrics,” he admits.

Photo Credit: Jimmy Fontaine
And while there are parts of the album that are confessional and experimental, many of the tracks are quintessential Ne-Yo: smooth, sexy R&B sprinkled with pop and hip-hop, a noble tenor giving way to a beautiful falsetto, with whiffs of Michael Jackson, Babyface, Usher, and Luther Vandross. Hence, again, the title of this upcoming album.
“I’ve been here almost 20 years now, and I’ve been releasing music for 16 years now. I feel like at this point, the album doesn’t really need a whole lot of explanation. It’s a Ne-Yo album. Meaning: If you know my music, you’ll know what to expect, to a degree. Expect songs that tell a story, that are easy to follow. It’s the kind of music that you can get ready to clean the house to on Sunday, as well as the music that you can listen to while getting ready for the club on Saturday, too. If you know me, you know what to expect, and if you don’t know me, you’ll learn what to expect,” he explains.
That doesn’t mean that he’s unoriginal in any way — he’s an innovator by nature — but mostly that, after all this time, he damn well knows what works — and what feels authentic. “I like to experiment, so here I jump around and try some different things, some EDM-inspired dance records. There are songs that kind of push the envelope a bit, but then others that fall right into place with what you know and appreciate from me,” he explains.
That means, he promises solemnly, that the album is not fully a tale about lost love that was found again. He has so much more to say.
“The entire album is not about my wife, because one thing that I’ve realized as an entertainer is that, as much as I want to be able to be authentically me as humanly possible, I also understand that not everybody else is married, or in my predicament. I can’t sing every song from the standpoint of a married man; not every visual can be my wife. I mean, it’s still entertainment at the end of the day. As much as people love and appreciate my wife, maybe they don’t want to know that every single song I’m singing is about her, because then how do you personalize it? So, not every song is about her or our situation — not even half, to be honest. There were songs that really meant something to me, and then songs where I kind of just needed to get them out and off my chest, and there were a lot, but only the best ones made the album, the ones that I felt like were going to tell the story I wanted to tell, but also be an instrument for a listener to use to help themselves whenever need be.”
So what made the cut? There’s the personally meaningful “Stay Down,” featuring Young Blue, about having a ride-or-die — which started off being about Williams, but then expanded to include his mother, his management team, all the people in his corner who have always had his back. It’s a dedication to “the people who have been around since the beginning, the ones I can genuinely say that if I never made another dollar ever again, are the people that would still be there.”
Then, there’s “Laying Low,” featuring up-and-coming talent State France, whom Ne-Yo just signed to his own Compound Entertainment. This story isn’t personal — it’s France’s tale, about being a single guy in LA showing a new girl the ropes in the City of Angels, who ditches him when she feels confident enough to explore on her own. “It’s not typical Ne-Yo, but it’s a great record, an interesting concept with two really lovely voices on it,” he says.
Moving on, there’s “Handle Me Gently,” Ne-Yo’s “throwback record,” rife with positive old-school vibes, inspired by the likes of New Edition; “You to Love,” featuring Jeremiah; “Call Me Up,” the result of working with new and rising talent with an interesting concept — a woman repeatedly calling her ex-boyfriend because her new partner “can’t do it the way he does”; and “Body Bag” — which pretty much errrryone in the strip club is going to get excited about. Come again?
“Basically, I’ve never had a strip club anthem — me, myself, as Ne-Yo — and I’ve always wanted one, that song that comes on and makes all the girls get up and do whatever they’re going to do. I’ve always wanted that record, so I wrote it.”
As a bonus, singer, actor, dancer, choreographer, and model, Teyana Taylor, is meant to direct the upcoming single’s music video — although as to when, Ne-Yo admits he doesn’t actually know. “Her schedule is busier than mine!” he declares. “But I thought it was a really cool concept to have Miss Teyana Taylor direct it. I’m actually really excited because she has immaculate vision.”
Collaboration is a much more prominent theme on Self-Explanatory more so than any other Ne-Yo record. Although he himself came to fame for penning Mario’s 2004 mega-hit, “Let Me Love You” — the one that prompted a meeting between him and then-Def Jam president Jay-Z and led to an eventual contract, and has written some of the world’s most recognizable songs for fellow artists, including Jennifer Hudson’s “Spotlight” and Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” — writing for himself has always been a predominantly solo effort… until now.
“The process of putting together this album was definitely different in that, as opposed to me going in and trying to figure out what concepts made for the best records, I sat down with two or three other writers and had to learn how to co-write. I’ve never been good at that because my writing process is kind of an internal thing. Meaning, I can sit with a beat or sit with a guy and a guitar and listen to chords long enough to formulate lyrics and melodies in my head, instead of working it out line by line with a different writer. It was an interesting experience, and a good way for me to not become that guy who’s stuck in doing things one way. There was a point in time when I was a slave to a pen and pad, when I had to write on physical paper to get my ideas across. I’m trying to take those shackles off now. I used to watch Jay-Z do it and I was amazed because I could never quite figure out how to do that myself.”
He pauses then continues, “I tell people all the time, there’s no wrong way to write a song. However, you get there is how you’re going to get there. But I actually found it kind of fun to try doing things slightly differently than I normally would and just see what comes out. You can’t do the same thing and expect a different outcome — that’s literally the definition of insanity. So I thought, Why not try some new things, get some new writers in, new producers, people I’ve never worked with before? And I can honestly say that I’m proud of this album. I’m proud of what it’s become.”
