Ne-Yo

On Year of the Gentleman, Ne-Yo has got swagger to spare. The R&B crooner has refined his soulful sound just as much as he's honed his image. On the album's cover, Ne-Yo's rockin' a dapper suit and white fedora. The swanky digs perfectly complement his newfound "Gentleman" mystique. However, the music's still got some serious soul n' flow. If anything, Ne-Yo's found a middle ground between the Rat Pack and R. Kelly. He wants to be classically debonaire, and he certainly is, but he also touts a modern sound that won't feel out of place in today's clubs. Ne-Yo's certainly maturing, but he's also not abandoning his patented style, and that makes for an admirable new effort.

Year of the Gentleman has no shortage of hooks. Tracks like "Closer" and "Back to What You Know" evince Ne-Yo's versatility. He seamlessly shifts from a jazzy baritone on the verses to a sexy falsetto during the choruses. Lyrically, he still covers the relationship game just as well as any of his peers do. However, Ne-Yo never deviates too far from the plan or gets cryptic. "Mad" is a straight-up apology ditty, while "Why Does She Stay" is a love song primed to light up the airwaves. Both tracks brandish huge melodies and slick production, and they'll no doubt resonate with the lovelorn set.

The single "Miss Independent" remains one of the album's standouts. It builds with a criss-crossing beat and Ne-Yo's bouncy verses. The chorus is hard-to-forget, and it oozes that swagger Ne-Yo promises on the cover. Just like fine wine, Ne-Yo's only getting better with age.

—Rick Florino
09.22.08

Apart from a little more drama, a notion set with the desperate urgency of opening track "Closer," not much makes Year of the Gentleman, Ne-Yo's third album in as many years, all that different from In My Own Words or Because of You. If there are any real shake-ups in the songwriter/singer's m.o., they are subtle, not glaring, typically evident only in the production wrinkles brought by his collaborators. Had each album been separated by a few years of inactivity, this lack of change might be an issue, but since breaking out with Mario's "Let Me Love You" in 2004, Ne-Yo has been nothing if not steady and consistent, a constant presence in the R&B chart who probably could not devise a gimmick if his career depended upon it -- unless you hold those natural and often uncanny Michael Jackson vocalisms, as present as ever throughout highlight "Nobody," against him. What makes the album slightly less satisfying than Ne-Yo's first two albums is that the ballads are slightly sappier and overwrought. The odds are in his favor, however, that no one has written a more gorgeous song about slothful self-loathing. That song, "Why Does She Stay," forms the front end of a two-track patch of glorious gloom -- the album's center, both literally and figuratively -- complemented by "Fade into the Background," where he watches the one who got away get married. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide