By Mikael Wood
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) -
As he prepares to release his
third album in as many years, R&B singer/songwriter Ne-Yo says
he is "a little bored" with urban music.
The genre has served him well, to be sure. His first two
albums have both been certified platinum, and he has co-written
such monster hits as Beyonce's "Irreplaceable," which spent 10
weeks atop the Hot 100 singles chart in 2006.
"There's some stuff on there that sounds like something the
Beatles might've done," Ne-Yo told Billboard. "There's some
stuff on there that sounds like something Billy Joel might've
done. I can't do just straight urban music no more, because to
be completely honest with you, I'm a little bored with it. I'm
just moving with what music excites me now."
An early preview does indeed indicate something a little
different from traditional R&B: "Closer" is a Stargate-produced
club track with pulsing strobe-light synths and a high-energy
house beat that calls to mind Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music."
"So You Can Cry" sports a mellow, easy-listening vibe, with
Ne-Yo making a priceless rhyme of "pity party" and "calamari."
Guitars and cymbals figure prominently in "What's the Matter,"
which Ne-Yo likens to "a Beatles-style rock record."
But will the little girls understand? Def Jam wants to
expand Ne-Yo's audience beyond its core of 16- to 24-year-old
females.
"The records he's written don't just speak to young black
girls," says Ashaunna Ayars, Def Jam's VP of marketing. "We're
trying to build an adult audience that appreciates his music as
well."
Part of the strategy involves Ne-Yo opening for Alicia Keys
on her two-month North American tour, which begins Saturday in
Hampton, Va.
"That partnership gets him in front of the more mature fan
base we're after," Ayars says.
But Ne-Yo is anxious about overdoing the stylistic
experimentation.
"My worry is that I'll do something that's so far left of
what I've already done that it's going to go over my fans'
heads. I pray that my fans are smarter than that."
And he hopes they will understand that if he keeps writing
songs like "So Sick" or "Sexy Love" or "Because of You," both
he and they will eventually get bored.
He says he always envisaged the third album would mark a
musical departure, and was expecting "to chill for a minute and
really take some time to figure out what I wanted that to be.
Fortunately, it didn't take me that long, which is why the
album's coming out now."
Reuters/Billboard
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