Ne-Yo’s Year of the Gentleman: The Best 21st Century R&B Album?

Las Vegas native Ne-Yo spent a solid decade at or near the top of the pop/R&B world, as a songwriter and performer. His pen game is what got him in the door, thanks to songs like “Unfaithful” (made popular by Rihanna), “Let Me Love You” (a #1 smash for teen heartthrob Mario), and “Irreplaceable,” the country-spiked Beyoncé smash. He then directed that pen towards his own songs and scored a chart-topper out of the box with the lovelorn ballad “So Sick.”

Through his first two albums, Ne-Yo continued to establish himself as a musical force to be reckoned with. He was most often compared to “Off the Wall”-era Michael Jackson, with whom he shared a boyish high tenor singing voice. One thing Ne-Yo could do that Michael mostly couldn’t, though, was write convincingly about real-life relationships. Nowhere is that more evident than on his third album, Year of the Gentleman. On this album, Ne-Yo turns down a bit of the overtly sexual rhetoric some of his earlier (and later) work would rely on, and delivers a suite of expertly written, heartfelt songs that capture that elusive quality evident in all great lyricists: you can’t tell whether they are pulling from the pages of their own life or if they are just expert storytellers. 

The pulsing, club-friendly opener “Closer” slaps, but it turns out to be a bit of a red herring compared to the rest of Year of the Gentleman, which is a mostly mid-tempo affair. The ups and downs of Ne-Yo’s relationships are explored thoughtfully and with a maturity and an attention to detail only hinted at previously. Highlights include “So You Can Cry,” on which Ne-Yo dips into a beautiful falsetto to allow the song’s subject to mourn a failed relationship. The tables turn on the devastating “Fade Into the Background” (for my money, the best song the man ever wrote). If you’ve ever stayed friends with an ex long enough to see them get married to someone else, this tune is 100% for you. 

Those songs are just the tip of the iceberg. “Miss Independent,” a catchy anthem of female empowerment, struck a chord with Ne-Yo’s main fanbase and became the album’s most popular single. Speaking of singles, there’s…um, “Single,” a song Ne-Yo handed over to New Kids on the Block to aid their comeback. Featured here in a solo version, it loses a slight bit of luster but remains an earworm. Throughout the album, Ne-Yo’s voice charms while his lyrics are razor sharp. 

Might Year of the Gentleman be the 21st century’s best contemporary R&B album? A more interesting set of questions for me are…given Gentleman’s release date and the knowledge that Ne-Yo was working on music for the King of Pop prior to the fateful events of June 25th, 2009, might Ne-Yo have been inspired to step his game up by being sent back to the drawing board by the notoriously exacting Michael Jackson? Hell, might Year of the Gentleman have been the album Michael would’ve ended up releasing had he lived? I’m not sure what caused Ne-Yo to deliver a masterpiece for his third album, but no matter the reason, Year of the Gentleman is worthy of your time if you haven’t given it attention in a while…or ever.