Ne-Yo wants you to get to know him more personally. The R&B singer-songwriter's platinum debut last year, In My Own Words, showed the world his songwriting ability, but he laments that no one knows him as a person. 'Nobody got to know what makes me tick,' he says.
So to put things right he's put more of his personality into the songs on his recently released second album, Because of You. 'Once you've listened to the whole thing, you can feel like you know me personally a little bit more,' he says.
It's hard to imagine that Ne-Yo wants to make more friends. He already has 458,463 of them on his MySpace page and has admitted that he doesn't keep close tabs on them.
'I'm always working,' he says. 'I don't get to go on MySpace a whole lot. But I do go on there from time to time and chat with the fans. Every day I meet someone who's trying to get into the business and every-body has a MySpace page. If I meet somebody and they say, 'Please, go on my MySpace page. Check out my music!' I'll go listen to it. If I dig it, I might respond. If I don't, I probably won't. Real talk.'
Real talk is what the 24-year-old Las Vegas native is all about. Not long ago, when he was still known as Shaffer Chimere Smith, Ne-Yo was in the same situation as all those people trying to get into the recording industry. But now that he's had two albums debut at No1 and received a couple of Grammy nominations, Ne-Yo's real talks need to be pre-recorded.
His record label, Def Jam, distributes a 20-minute interview and three-page biography of its young money-maker to media outlets. Questions flash on the screen like subtitles to a silent film. Then Ne-Yo, seated in an armchair and wearing a letterman-style jacket and driver's cap, answers thoughtfully.
