Year of the Gentleman

He has paired his God given gifts with some styles of those of the past. Great Job!

All the songs on this album are love songs (a known trait of neyo), for those of you who don't know. The best songs on the album are tracks 3, 4, 5. Other than that, I believe the album is mediocre at best.

Once I hear his single "So Sick" I was sold on his voice and songwriting. But to my disappointment, as with most mainstream artist, I didn't like his first two albums because of the hip hop feel or soap operaish topics. While I didn't like those complete albums I always had favorite songs from them. But this album, Year of the Gentleman, is exactly what I was looking for when I hear Ne-Yo for the first time. Smooth voice and excellent songwriting over respectful quality mature topics. I like the whole album.

Ne-Yo is one of a kind. There is no other artist out there that can write a song like him. And on this album, Ne-Yo really gives you some good quality R&B music. Unlike his first two albums, which both i would consider more pop than R&B, this album really focuses on the R&B side more. Ne-Yo has never had the best voice, but he has always found a way to make it work. And yet again he works with previous collaborators Stargate to make another great album, and in my opinion, Ne-Yo's best work to date. The thing that really made this album speacial is that its not as holey as his other albums. By that i mean, Year of The Gentleman is an album that you can play almost all the way through, only skipping a two or three tracks. On his first two album, all he really gave you were some amazing singles and a couple of good album tracks, the rest was filler to me. On this album, the album tracks are some of the highlights, like on the very groovey and bluesy "Fade Into The Background" where Ne-Yo sings the story of watching a woman that he wanted get married. And on the amazing and very up beat guitar laced Stargate produced "Back To What You Know", he tells his woman "If you dont wanna be with me, than go back to what you know". But the singles on this album, are actually where some of the mistakes happen. Besides the cleary addicting and truly amazing "Miss Independent", the other singles "Closer" and "Mad" are kind of dull. "Closer" was alright for a while, but then it just got way to over played, and on "Mad" i just feel like hes whining to much. And then on "So You Can Cry" Ne-Yo sounds like hes choking on some food while hes singing, so that track was a miss, but it couldve been a great track if he didnt sing like a two year old on it. But other than those tracks there are some great songs on this album, like the Michael Jacksonish "Nobody", which litterally sounds like it could have been written for MJ, and on the sad and dark "Why Does She Stay" Ne-Yo brings back that So Sick feel with a great mid tempo ballad about how he doesnt treat his woman right. Overall, Ne-Yo provides his best work to date with "Year of The Gentleman", but i still do think he can give us more. But a great album none the less.



Grade:
B+

I loved both of ne-yo's previous cd's and this 3rd album is nothing short of amazing!! True Ne-yo fans and even new Ne-yo fans will love this album.. it really compliments his style.. my favs are- so you can cry, single, mad, miss independent, lie to me, nobody and part of the list!! check it out, its definetly worth every penny!! Love u Ne-yo, keep it up!!