Here's the review I wrote up for the Gazette, should be appearing sometime this week in the A&E section:

Ne-Yo
Year of the Gentleman
Def Jam
4/5 Stars



Ne-yo brings in the Year of the Gentleman, his third offering into the world of love, break-ups, tears, and admiration of the women around him.

While the album follows his usual heart-on-sleeve falsetto style, he brings about a more mature side to his work citing influences from the Rat Pack, including Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davies, Jr. “Trying to take it back to where you couldn’t walk out of the house unless you looked your best,” his aim was to personify the attitude into this album’s tracks.

And that he did – with the exception of ‘Closer’, a departure from his slow-paced songs, about his intoxication with a woman and inability to break apart from her, and ‘Nobody’; the rest of his album offers the heart-warming (and breaking) music that he is known to sing and write.

With songs like ‘Mad’, ‘So You Can Cry’, and ‘Part of the List’ bleeding tears from his heart, and new single ‘Miss Independent’ praising the modern woman who ‘moves like a boss…’, Ne-yo sings up a storm of emotion and respect so well that it will have you wondering if you should start taking notes from him.

His ability to pen master hits, as well as having a voice that is early Jackson-esque, Ne-yo succeeds in creating a well-pressed album, filled with the soft, sweeter side of R&B opposed to the more explicit music offered by the likes of Usher this past summer. Ne-yo shows that with the Fall can come a new kind of Gentleman, one that loves his woman and genuinely cares for her – while doing it in style too.

STAND OUT TRACKS: Closer, Mad, Miss Independent, So You Can Cry, Stop the World
TRACKS TO SKIP: Nobody, Back to What You Know

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