Ne-Yo: Non-Fiction (Motown) Between Complex’s, “A fire sale of songs no one else bought,” Rolling Stone’s, “With younger, fresher soulmen like Miguel, Frank Ocean and the Weeknd on the scene, Ne-Yo has been left grasping for relevance,” and Slant’s “Ne-Yo may be a man of many talents, but his new album, Non-Fiction, makes it clear that the scope of those talents is limited,” I’m left wondering if I’m listening to the same album as everyone else. These songs are mostly wonderful. “Integrity” is an album track that deserves to be a single, “Coming with You” a single that deserves to be a hit, and “She Knows” a hit that deserves to be a bigger hit. And while plenty of criticism has been directed at the album’s concept, it’s hardly as distracting as everyone is making it out to be. More distracting are two awful songs, the Pitbull collaboration “Time of Our Lives” (bad even by Pitbull standards) and the appalling “Story Time,” which starts dumb and ends with homophobia and domestic violence threats. These two knock Non-Fiction down a notch, but it’s otherwise very good. B+
Advertisement
