ON THE RISE
Aug. 7, 2024 was not just another Wednesday in Las Vegas. It was Ne-Yo Day.
No, really: Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman proclaimed that Aug. 7, 2024 was officially "Ne-Yo Day" in the city, presenting Ne-Yo with a Key to the City during his first night of his three-show Human Love Rebellion residency at the Encore Theatre at Wynn Las Vegas.
It had already been a full-circle day for the R&B hitmaker, who grew up in Sin City and got his start in the entertainment business as an understudy in the David Cassidy-starring show "EFX." As a hometown boy, Ne-Yo knew there'd be at least a few familiar faces in the crowd — and that makes his Key to the City even more special.
"I've run into a lot of girls that were not interested in me in high school and, yes, it's a totally different story now," Ne-Yo tells GRAMMY.com with a smile. "There's a part of me that wants to be petty, but I can't do that. [But] when I run into those that were mean in high school, those are always fulfilling moments."
Ne-Yo's career has been full of fulfilling moments — beginning with his 2005 chart-topping smash "So Sick," and followed by two No. 1 albums, 12 Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, and three GRAMMY Awards. He celebrates it all with his 100-minute show, which features other favorites like "Because of You" and the diamond-certified Pitbull collab "Give Me Everything."
In June, he began his journey as an independent artist after nearly 20 years with Motown and Def Jam Records, releasing the confessional single "2 Million Secrets" alongside a "CSI"-inspired video he directed himself. With a fresh start, Ne-Yo says he rarely feels like he's already two decades into his career.
"The only time it feels like it's been 20 years is right after a show where my back and my knees are bothering me," he says with a laugh. "If you don't see the age out here, I'm feeling it on the inside!"
Ahead of his Las Vegas residency, Ne-Yo sat down with GRAMMY.com to share his most memorable moments with some of his most beloved hits, from a hilarious wardrobe malfunction with "Because of You" to how Jay-Z helped save "Closer."
What instantly comes to mind with "So Sick" is my initial introduction to Stargate. I was at Sony Studios in New York City working with [another] group of producers. [I pass] Stargate's manager — his name is Tim, I met him before briefly. He said, "Hey, are you busy right now? I would love you to come in for a second and meet my producers."
So I walk with him over to the studio — mind you, he says they do R&B, they do hip-hop, they do a little bit of everything. And Tim is Black, so I'm expecting to walk in the room and see two Black guys. I walk in the room and they are absolutely not Black. They are two tall, lanky, white guys with accents. They're from Norway. And I'm like, These guys are gonna do some R&B music for me, huh?
The very first track they played was the music that we now know as "So Sick." I listened to it for like, 10 seconds, and I'm like, "Run it back." So they played it again, and by the time the song finished playing the second time, the song was written. I wrote that song in maybe 3 minutes.
It was a song that needed to be written for a long time. It just hadn't found the right backing music for it yet.
Here's the first time I realized that Stargate was producing around what I was writing. I wrote "Sexy Love" to the skeletal track they gave me, and then about a week later, I go to the studio and they're like, "You got to hear this." A beat comes on, and it's vaguely what I'd recalled, but completely different. They basically changed the whole beat based around [what] I wrote. So the "Sexy Love" we now know, that was not the original track.
I'm like, "I don't mind, because it sounds great, but why did y'all do that?" And they were like, "We just felt like this direction complemented the song more." They're the only producers that I've ever worked with that do that.
Nowadays, the producer is kind of a celebrity too. Everybody has a tag, and you hear the producer's name before the song starts. You'll never hear that from Stargate. They're like, "You're gonna listen to this song, and you're gonna love it so much that you're gonna ask who did it."
The part in the video where I don't have any shoes on — the performance piece — that was not by design. I don't remember who styled that video, but all the shoes they brought were too big. [They] were 11 1/2, I'm a size 10. But I couldn't do it barefoot, so I'm like, "Alright, let's just do it."
So I'm dancing, and then whoop! There goes one shoe. I look at the director, and he's like, "Just keep going!" So I kicked the other one off, and just continued doing what I was doing.
I've danced barefoot and in socks in the kitchen, you know, trying to moonwalk and all of that countless times as a kid. But I'd never done it as an adult. It was a bucket-list moment, scratched it off: performed with no shoes.
I wrote it with the intent of selling it to somebody who would make more sense with that style. We stayed overseas for damn near two years, just touring around. While I was over there, I started listening to a lot of house, techno, EDM. With a lot of those songs, there might be two words in the whole song just repeated over and over. But I'm paying more attention to what the music is doing to the people that are listening… Everybody goes nuts. These people are getting this kind of response with no words!
So I'm like, imagine if somebody took that energy and wrote a song over it that actually means something — it'd be double the effect, right?
Me and Stargate get in the studio. They start putting together the track, I write the song, it's done. We're listening back, and I'm like, "Yeah, we will be able to sell this easy." And they're like, "Sell it? No, no, this is yours." And I'm like, "Nah, I don't think my fan base is gonna understand that."
I let my management hear it, and they're like, "Yeah, this is yours." I let Jay-Z hear it, [and he's like] "Bro, this is the one!" I'm like, "What are y'all hearing? Because I don't get it."
I did not expect the song to do well. And for the first three, four months, it didn't. Here in the States, nobody was feeling it, to the point where we walked into the label one day with the total intention of telling L.A. Reid we should switch to another single. As we're walking to L.A. Reid's office, Jay-Z stops me and goes, "I know you about to tell him that you want to get off that record. Do not get off that record." And I'm like "Bro, it's been four months!"
That same year, we did the BET Awards. I performed "Closer," and the Jabbawockeez was a part of the show. After that performance, that song took off. My manager hits me with the "I told you so" every single time we think of "Closer."
"Miss Independent" was the first time I ever won a GRAMMY. I learned through winning a GRAMMY for that song that there are GRAMMY wins that are not televised.
I'm walking the red carpet, just soaking it all in, taking pictures, doing interviews, and as I'm talking to some interviewer, this girl blows by me and goes, "Congratulations, you just want a GRAMMY," and keeps walking.
So I go to my manager, I'm like, "Yo, um, did we win?" And he's like, "F—, who told you?" And I'm like, "I don't got my speech!" He's like, "You don't need a speech. You won for a category that's not televised, so you're not gonna get on stage."
It was kind of bittersweet, because I've been dreaming of a GRAMMY since childhood. I have my acceptance speech written already. I was gonna get up on stage and thank my mom, and do the whole thing, like, "Oh wow, this thing's heavy!"
I've won three GRAMMYs, and I've yet to walk across the GRAMMY stage and thank my mom. I might just do a Kanye. I might just walk up on stage when somebody else is accepting their GRAMMY and go, "Hey, congratulations, but while I'm here — um, yeah, never got to do this before, so" and just have somebody bring mine out and do it right then. I think that'd be a moment! And then I'd instantly get arrested and kicked out of the GRAMMYs and banned forever. [Laughs.]
We were in the U.K., Wembley Stadium, 80,000 people, me and Pitbull [for Capital FM's Summertime Ball in 2015]. Right at the part where it says, [sings] "Grab somebody sexy tell 'em hey," 80,000 people [are] jumping up and down at the same time. The whole place was shaking. It felt like electricity shooting through you, there was just so much energy coming at the stage. I literally felt sparks.
Pitbull felt it too. After the show, he was like, "Yo, right at the part where we went—" and I was like, "YO I know right! You felt it too?"
Me and Pitbull are actually really good friends. I met him before he became Mr. Worldwide and started wearing the suits and the whole nine. We've actually done a bunch of music together that the world has never heard.
Pitbull is not your typical celebrity. From a guy who's having the success that he's having, you would expect an ego, a big, huge entourage, and a whole bunch of commotion around him. He doesn't club. He does the most amazing party music ever, and he doesn't go to regular clubs. Pitbull's definition of a club? He has his own island, and he'll just invite you to the island.
The song is about owning your s—. No one is perfect, no one is above making a mistake. But no one is beneath redemption, either. I absolutely made some mistakes in my previous marriage. And, you know, one thing that music has always been for me is therapy. If I have things that I couldn't say out of my mouth, I could write it in a song.
It took a little bit of growing up, maturing, for me to even write that song. For whatever reason, when you do something wrong and you know that you're wrong, my first instance was to place blame on anybody but myself. I quickly realized that that's not the way to heal, that's not the way to move on, that's not the way to receive redemption for what you have done. You have to own your mistakes… and then pray for redemption and acceptance of your apology from the people that you've wronged.
Writing the song was very much therapeutic for me. I don't even call it a song. It's more of a confessional — it's me confessing to the wrongs that I did, and realizing that the best way to go about it is to get it out and then figure out how to move on. And that's exactly what me and my ex-wife have done. We moved on. We're in a great place now.
ON THE RISE
M.O.T.H.E.R. – the new collaborative band helmed by Robbie Furze of The Big Pink and currently featuring Jamie T and Jamie Hince of The Kills – have given their first proper interview, talking to NME about the emotional origins of the project, their aim to be “the guitar version of N.E.R.D.”, and their hit-list of future collaborators.
Revealing the new project at the end of May alongside the blistering anthemics of debut single ‘My Love’, Furze shared that the seeds of M.O.T.H.E.R. had come from losing his own parent after a prolonged illness. “My mum got sick about five years ago and was ill for about four years before she died,” he told NME.
“In that period I had a daughter, which was this real juxtaposition of death and birth. My mates – Jamie T and Jamie Hince – came together for me, and then sadly Jamie [Hince] lost his dad too,” Furze went on, sitting in a West London pub alongside Hince.
Hince continued: “I lost my dad four days after Robbie [lost his mum], and it felt like, if ever there was a calling, it was that. But it didn’t all come out of that doom and gloom. I hate mentioning COVID but everyone had so much time on their hands and there was this open creativity back then. I was working on music with Jamie T, sending each other stuff, and the idea for the three of us to do something together came out of that. It felt nice, like we were buying into this camaraderie, and this gang.”
The three musicians have previous credits together, with the two Jamies also writing on The Big Pink’s most recent album, 2022’s ‘The Love That’s Ours’. Fully collaborating on M.O.T.H.E.R., Furze joked, was like “the clash of three egos”. “Everyone wants to work with each other because you like what each other does, and so it’s not quite imposter syndrome but you have to live up to [that idea] and jump in and be a character,” Hince continued. “You can’t be too humble about it.”
Recording between Hince’s studio in LA and Furze’s studio in London’s Bethnal Green, the current trio have also dropped their self-titled debut EP featuring three further tracks: ‘Real Human’, ‘Traitor’, and ‘Surrender’. The ethos of the band, meanwhile, is for the line-up to shift with each release, bringing in familiar faces from other groups and working with whoever might be available at the time.
“We did a little bit [of recording] with Jenny [Lee Lindberg, bassist] from Warpaint who I love; I really want to get something solid down with her,” revealed Hince, while Furze suggested that names including Zach Hill of industrial hip-hop trio Death Grips, and electronic producer Skream have all been in the mix for future iterations of the band.
“We ran into Zach and he seemed into it but then he started ghosting me,” he noted. “Whether or not he decides to text me back, it would be wonderful to have that kind of thing. Jamie Hince, Skream, Rhys Webb from The Horrors [who played on their recent radio session], and Zach – if I saw that, I’d wanna hear what that nonsense sounds like!”
Check out the rest of the interview with Furze and Hince below, as they discuss their endearing bromance, their admiration for Jamie T, and why the band are unlikely to ever make an album.
NME: Hello Robbie and Jamie! You must have been kicking about at a lot of ‘00s parties, how far does your friendship go back?
Robbie Furze: “Me and Jamie T started becoming friends on the circuit of festivals when the first Big Pink record came out in 2009. Then me and Jamie Hince met at Corona Capital in Mexico in 2012.”
Jamie Hince: “He had a reputation – I think we all had reputations… I remember his wife giving me these dried insect snacks and I didn’t eat them because I thought he might have laced them with something…”
Furze: “Every band playing Corona Capital was staying in this massive hotel, so it was just chaos.”
Hince: “It was at the height of ego. Everyone had bodyguards. Bands were trying to outdo other bands. Like, The Black Keys – you’re two guys from Ohio, you don’t need armed bodyguards…”
Where does Jamie T fit into all this?
Hince: “Our orbits crossed quite a bit. I remember seeing him at some tiny little pub when he was probably about 19, and I love how it’s come full circle. My heart sinks a little bit when I see Jamie T working because I know I’m nowhere near [as good as] that. I have to chip away at things and stand back and then dive in again to get the feeling, whereas he’s just got the feeling from the start.”
Furze: “He’s pretty incredible. The song ‘Traitor’ on the EP was supposed to be for my vocal, and he was almost getting pissed off that we couldn’t get the verses right. He was just like, ‘I’ll sort it out’, goes up to the mic, does one take and it’s done. See you later. He’s that kind of guy.”
Do you have to leave your ego at the door in those situations?
Hince: “I did this amazing beat for ‘Traitor’ that I loved, and I sent it to Jamie T and got back a text saying: ‘One pound fish’. Fuck! I mean talk about leaving your ego at the door… I know what he was saying, he thought it was a bit ‘cor blimey’ waltz. But some of the shit he ends up doing, it’s totally ‘cor blimey one pound fish’!”
Furze: “But whatever works for the track works, and everyone has to be happy with it. You push each other without really knowing it.”
How did you envision the project?
Hince: “These things just come together. It sounds cheesy, but I wanted it to be the guitar version of N.E.R.D. – a production team of people that love each other.”
Furze: “We’ve got songs in the pipeline with other artists already, and it makes it like an N.E.R.D. or Unkle or Massive Attack thing. Being collaborative makes me more excited.”
Hince: “It feels like that time has gone where albums really last. Records seem to come and go quite quickly now. So I’ve shifted my enthusiasm because I think the attention span has gone. You spend so much time making records and so little time getting any reward.”
Furze: “I’d like to do standalone singles, or another EP of four or five tracks as a batch. I wouldn’t wanna go further than that.”
None of your individual bands and projects sound that alike – where do you think your tastes align?
Hince: “There’s something unspoken that we all seem to agree on which is this epic-ness. There’s a line in one of the songs that talks about ‘the last of the hooligans‘ and that seemed to be the feeling behind it all. If there’s a similarity with what everyone wanted, it was maybe just being a bit romantic and epic.”
Why do you think you were drawn to that?
Hince: “I don’t know, maybe we’re just lonely men?”
Furze: “Beaten down but being pulled up by hope…”
Hince: “We’ve all been bashing around, making all this noise and spending so much time doing it; I think it gives you that feeling. There’s something tiny and irrelevant about what you do but something life and death about what you do too, and I think the cocktail of that makes it… well, the last of the hooligans.”
Tell us a bit about ‘My Love’ – the first proper single.
Furze: “It’s one of the most basic songs. It’s a love song about hope, but it just has such an incredible energy to it with its simplicity. I’m not a massive Beatles fan but it has this relatable energy [like their early music]. ‘I wanna hold your hand’ – you don’t get more basic than that, in a great way. I think simplicity is power. Sometimes less is more, and if you mean it you can get away with it.”
Are there going to be live shows?
Furze: “Definitely. We’re playing a bit of catch up because we didn’t think ‘My Love’ would get the reaction it has, but we’re desperate to get out and do gigs.”
Hince: “In the spirit of the collaborative project, I’m really liking the idea of having different people in different countries playing with us; having a different vibe each time.”
Furze: “It would be really exciting to see different characters that you know from different bands. For the radio session [with Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 Music] we had Rhys Webb from The Horrors on bass, and I love that idea.”
You’re obviously very close – what are your favourite memories of this charming bromance?
Furze: “Jamie’s probably my best friend in the world and we’ve been through a lot together. In 2015 we both uprooted and went out to LA together, I went out there for about five years and he stayed, so we were pretty inseparable. It got to a point where it was breakfast, lunch and dinner together.”
Hince: “We just became one person. People would confuse us even though we don’t look the same. He had an ex-girlfriend who he went to say hello to and she said, ‘Hello Jamie’. We just started having the same vibe. The same embarrassing energy. We’ve chilled out a bit recently but when I was in LA and Robbie was in London we’d speak to each other for four hours a day. I was getting complaints from his wife.”
The ‘M.O.T.H.E.R. EP’ is out now.
The Big Pink returned with their third studio album, ‘The Love That’s Ours’, in 2022. It marked their first full-length effort in over 10 years. T and Hince worked on that LP, too, co-writing the single ‘Love Spins On Its Axis’.
The Kills released their sixth and latest record, ‘God Games’, in 2023.
Jamie T, meanwhile, made a comeback with ‘The Theory Of Whatever’ the previous year. He recently joined forces with Fred Again.. on the track ‘Lights Burn Dimmer’, and performed with The Maccabees at their big London reunion gig last summer.
