Anyone bought Ne-Yo's "The Year of the Gentleman" yet?

This boy deserves his own thread already.

it's definitely on the list of new releases i'm planning on picking up this week, probably tomorrow after work.

i love it.

loving this...

he sometimes mistakes chivalry for boot-licking but there really aren't that many queasy moments. 'mad', 'so you can cry' and 'fade into the background' are prob my favourites.

dear ne-yo, what kind of hat should i buy myself?

The last one disappointed me. Other than "Because of You" (one of my top five singles last year), the rest wasn't so much more-of-the-same as not-as-good-as-the-same.

This album is dull, his worst yet.

"So You Can Cry" is like the only standout besides "Miss Independent" and "Single"

I usually don't listen this kind of music too much, but heard this and not that bad at all, better than any mainstream r&b I can remember from the last few years.
"Stop This World" is a really good closing track.

uh if you dont listen to this kind of music much how are you able to tell that it's better than any mainstream r&b??

I really liked "Sex with my ex" on the last one

The main thing that strikes me about this, other than its general standard of quality, is that he's finally figured out how to make uptempo cuts work for him.

I must be the only one who thinks "Closer" is kinda stunning.

Lowpoint of the album: "Why Does She Stay"

I love "Closer."

yeah i think most of us all really like "closer"

OK, my mistake. The first two tracks on this album are fantastic to me. Then his sensitivity starts to get on my nerves.

"Closer" is one of my favorite singles of the year. Looking forward to picking this up tomorrow. I hope it's better than Because of You (Alfred OTM).

I'll admit 4/4 beats are sort of default on my annual lists of favorite singles. I'm sure Janet's "Feedback" will also place highly.

This album is EXTRAORDINARY. It's so inventive and playful, Ne-Yo is so likable in it, the production is loose and jittery, the songs are juggernauts, every line is a hook, the way the Nancy Sinatra sample suddenly jumps out at the end of Bang Bang is striking and original and it emerges from the great ooze of the bass sounding like a million bucks. Also, his voice is like honey, and well I don't really know what else, he's really arrived for me with this one (not that he hasn't had great singles, but pretty much everything here feels essential to me) Holy Shit Please don't fall in love!

I think "Closer" is great, too. Alfred said somewhere he was disappointed with it.

I'll admit 4/4 beats are sort of default on my annual lists of favorite singles

Not to be pedantic, but I think you mean four to the floor rather than 4/4 (which describes like 90% of popular music)?

haha i was JUST about to bitch about the misuse of "4/4" that's been so rampant lately. should i blame rich juzwiak?

Probably.

Juzwiak:
You needn't look further than the name of my blog to find that the 4/4 beat—that pummeling disco/house stomp that believes every measure should be equal—is close to my heart.

That's not even an accurate description of four to the floor: it's not that every measure is equal (again, this describes 90% of popular music, probably more) but that every beat is.

yeah i mean i love reading dude's stuff, but i always grind my teeth when he talks about that.

ha, yeah

Surely you can accept 4/4 as a colloquial shorthand for four to the floor, right?

4-2-4?

Fun fact, "Disco Juice" is in 7/4 4/4 4/4

Surely you can accept 4/4 as a colloquial shorthand for four to the floor, right?

lol, have you never discussed music with me before?

Surely you can accept 4/4 as a colloquial shorthand for four to the floor, right?

Not when it already has a widely accepted other meaning.

ha, i used to HATE that use of 4/4 but it doesn't bother me as much now.

wait, i think it still bothers me.

dude if you didn't hold shit down for drummer snobs around here I would officially lose my faith

couple of tracks i've listened to off this were great (only really know him through his singles, i haven't listened to his other albums)

OK, fine. I apologize. I promise to type out four. on. the. floor. from now on.

You could have typed 4ot4 and people would have eventually gotten it.

looks like aota ... aorta ... heartbeat, it makes me feel ...

Haven't bought this yet, and probably will this weekend, but the first two are such solid to unremarkable B+ affairs-plus-great-singles that I'm still skeptical.

You are still so rong about his first album, but anyway this is great, even if a couple of the ballads are on the treacly side. "Closer" is awesome of course. "Nobody" sounds like something from Justified, oddly enough. The stretch from "Fade Into the Background" to "Back to What You Know" is all brilliant.

My take on the whole "4/4" thing is that "four-to-the-floor" should be abbreviated as "4x4".

Is it really so hard to just type what you mean???

No I agree with Alfred, but it does not apply to this YOTG because it is clearly great.

Reverend is OTM - "4X4" is widely accepted and understood, and gets a lot of use in discussions of dance music where this stuff comes up the most e.g. in UK Garage people will refer to "4X4 Garage" etc.

"uh if you dont listen to this kind of music much how are you able to tell that it's better than any mainstream r&b??

― t_g, 2008. szeptember 19. 15:27 (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink"

It doesn't mean that I never listen this kind of music, just not my cup of tea.

Say It Fast is incredible, his singing is so great, he really messes around with pretty strange effects and melodies, this album came out of nowhere for me.

Interesting. I honestly didn't expect such a positive reaction. After getting really excited by him after the first album, the second one kinda stopped all his momentum (except for the title track which may be my favorite of his songs). Stuff like "Do You" and "Can We Chill" just really don't sit well with me. Too smooth and lightweight. Plus the fact that he seems like such a cheese bag that sometimes the honeyed vocals and the personality and the total package just turn me off (I realize my feelings about his personality could ideally be separated from my analysis of his music but it just can't be). I definitely wasn't excited by "Miss Independent" and its stuttery pixel-dust synths (enough of those already). But "Closer" is definitely more appealing. Maybe I'll give it a chance.

Oh and another thing that has soured me on him is this whole "the savior of R&B lyric writing" thing that always comes up regarding him. I mean sure he's written some huge hits, but nothing about his songs scream "genius" to me so much as "effective lyric writer with not much competition in the current landscape."

This took about three plays to sink in fully, a good sign, and I play it all the time even after writing about it, which is a great sign. This will almost certainly make my Top 5 this year. As Maura pointed out to me, there's really an early-'90s vibe (and not just because of NKOTB), the point where pop and R&B and the emergent Latin invasion were commingling on Top 40. "Stop This World" just totally kills me. So does "Fade Into the Background" and "Mad" and "Lie to Me" and especially "Why Does She Stay." The best Babyface album since Waiting to Exhale.

Alan Jackson needs to cover "So You Can Cry" so fucking bad.

He's had an early-90s (or at least mid-90s, which I prefer, actually) vibe all along!

Yeah, but it seems more pronounced now, like I think its more overt, you can see it in the cover art and everything.

yeah, the "badoom-bum-bum" part is what i'm talking about

i think it's pretty easy to see how it's annoying? it's like a bad commercial jingle

it's like "i'm lovin it" or something

it sounds just like this part of "we major" which u stan 4 iirc jordan sargent

but it's way better than "we major"

Sorry to link to Perez, but...?!

http://perezhilton.com/2010-07-21-ne-yo-involved-with-underage-prostitute

o_O

uhhh did we see this video yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J2dwFVZHsY

oh shaffer

wait "one in a million" is kind of really good

yeah i wasnt expecting much after his "rap" at the start but its actually a nice return to form for him

Yeah, I can't stop listening to "One in a Million." And I even kind of like the video, even though it's just a rip-off of "The Way You Make Me Feel" (okay, plus a dumb superhero element).

Ne-No, I have Ne-Not bought it yet

dope song, lol at the video

i am kinda obsessed with "champagne life" now

-_-

i would like to point out that this is roughly 400 times better than anything actually on this incoming shitpile of an album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfySFLkRioM

I haven't heard the album yet but "Beautiful Monster" is 1000x the song that "Drinks Up" could ever hope to be.

Hello from Amazon.com.

We're writing about the order you placed on September 05 2010 (Order# 102-5456735-3305029). Unfortunately, the release date for the item(s) listed below has changed, and we need to provide you with a new delivery estimate based on the new release date:

Ne-Yo "Libra Scale"
Estimated arrival date: November 22 2010

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this delay.

Just got my review copy of this album, and I'm enjoying it. The superhero motif is mercifully unobtrusive. It's a much more upbeat album than Gentleman, and the Michael Jackson influence is extremely thick ("Cause I Said So" sounds like a Dangerous outtake). A few of the softer ballads haven't made much of an impression on me yet, but that's nothing new. I still not a fan of "Beautiful Monster," but that song isn't indicative of the album's sound at all, and it's buried unceremoniously at the end of the record where it doesn't do much damage. This is definitely a smoother, more adult-friendly R&B album than it's been marketed as.

I had no idea it was possible to even try to market a Ne-Yo album as anything other than smooth and adult-friendly

can't wait for this

downloading this now, i don't think there's anyway it can actually live down to my expectations, thankfully

I'm really enjoying it, though if you don't like "Champagne Life" you might have a harder time with it, since that song is a good litmus test for the album. My low expectations came from "Beautiful Monster," which is the album's real outlier.

i like "one in a million" a lot

the GNR song?

i heard the ne-yo "one in a million" once and don't remember a thing about it

ditto

tbf i can't remember anything about it either, except that i remember thinking that i liked it a lot

The outro to "Cause I Said So" = jittery early eighties robo-funk heaven.

"one in a million" has a total boy band vibe that i dig

heard "one in a million" for the first time last night and was very pleased. i was worried i would never like a ne-yo song again!

Libra Scale is growing on me nicely; it's a charming little album. Doesn't have the blockbuster YOTG singles, but it's lighter on its toes than that record; it just breezes from start to finish

strange affair for a purported blockbuster this. it is indeed a uniformly pleasant listen (short like an ep too) but doesn't really ever seem to get out of second gear to become anything more than that - i would be disappointed if this was the result of anything longer than an afternoon's work. very reminiscent of rick ross' recent albums of empty luxe signifiers, only with an mj bent (ie it's true about 'champagne life' being its litmus test.)

as it is, what could have been a bravura r&b bait-n-switch kinda leaves me almost wanting the silly superhero concept album i thought i was in for; at very least the way 'what have i done' works so nicely as the remorseful part 2 jekyll to 'beautiful monster's hyde suggests some interplay with the erstwhile theme might have been more profitable. (interplay in a broad sense rather than just soundtracking some bogus b-movie script like this album supposedly does.)

it is indeed a uniformly pleasant listen (short like an ep too) but doesn't really ever seem to get out of second gear to become anything more than that

After four plays, I'm in this camp too. He's a better arranger now than he was in 2006 though.

jordan otm about 'one in a million' btw, it's kinda a nothing-or-compulsive-song but i'm leaning towards the latter view lately. (especialy what with the winter nights drawing in over here.)

the boyband thing feels very true too but i can't quit put an objective finger on how it works exactly.

All the good fast ones remind me of the last one's "Nobody."

true, although nothing here is remotely in 'nobody's league.

'one in a million' is really clicking for me

same here, dope single. really loving "Genuine Only" on the album too.

the album's a B+ or B. Certainly not loving it like I did its predecessor.

Anyway, my review.

like the album but i took "beautiful monster" off of it on accident and don't miss it

I listened to 'because of you' today also and realized that libra scale is just an album of deep cuts off of because of you

wtf, "beautiful monster" is the album's lone highlight for me

xp

i think you're alone in that, dude.

oh i know ^_^

then why bother saying "wtf" like you're surprised?

wasn't meant to indicate surprise, more like "i disagree w/ that"

what the fuck do you think "wtf" means

lol, not gonna have this conversation, sorry -- "wtf" totally dependent on context/tone

i disagree with that, but let me put that in terms you understand: wtf