Shaffer Chimere Smith better known by his stage name Ne-Yo was born in Camden, Arkansas is an American R&B singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer and actor. His stage name is taken from the Keanu Reeves character Neo in the film The Matrix.
Biography
Son of a Chinese Decent father and an African-American Mother. Both his parents were musicians. As a young child, he was raised by his mother after she separated from his father. In hopes of better opportunity, his mother relocated the family to Las Vegas, Nevada.
While in high school, he began performing with a group of friends in a rhythm and blues (R&B) band called Envy. While singing with Envy, Ne-Yo used the stage name "Gogo". After graduation, the group went to Los Angeles, California, with a bold and theatrical plan: to sing outside the offices of Capitol Records until someone offered them a recording contract. They did attract the attention of Capitol executives, who threatened to call the police if they did not leave. However, Ne-Yo used his time in the music industry capital to make contact with other musicians in hopes of gaining work as a songwriter. His first success came with the sale of several songs to a boy group from Ohio called Youngstown. Youngstown included a number of Ne-Yo songs, such as "Don't Worry," "Lose My Cool," and "Float Away" on their albums Let's Roll and Down for the Get Down.
Even though Envy broke up in 2000, Ne-Yo remained in Los Angeles working to develop his music career. He began using the stage name Ne-Yo after a friend commented that he seemed to be able to "see" music, like the protagonist Neo in the 1999 science-fiction film The Matrix. A fan of the film, Ne-Yo enjoyed the comparison and adopted the name, changing the spelling to incorporate the hip-hop salute, "Yo!" Interestingly, the performer Ne-Yo is three years younger than his alter ego, Shaffer Smith.
Ne-Yo continued to write songs, frequently making demonstration tapes to show other singers how his music would sound. Before long, record company executives noticed the clear, expressive voice of the songwriter, and Ne-Yo finally won the recording contract he had sought. However, even though he recorded an album with Columbia Records, the company did not release it, believing that it did not contain the big radio hit necessary to ensure album sales. The company dropped his contract in 2003, and Ne-Yo decided to devote his energies to writing rather than performing.
After writing songs for a number of popular singers, including Marques Houston and Christina Milian, his breakthrough hit came in 2004, when Mario, a teenage R&B star, recorded "Let Me Love You," a poignant and complex love song, cowritten by Ne-Yo, Scott Storch, and Kam Houf. "Let Me Love You" reached number one on Billboard's R&B list and Hot 100 Singles chart and became one of the most-played records of the year on U.S. radio stations. Soon, Ne-Yo had another recording contract, this time with Def Jam Records, a hip-hop label that he felt would understand his music more completely.
In 2006 Def Jam released Ne-Yo's first album, In My Own Words, because he had written or cowritten each of its songs. The album sold over one million copies, with a hit single, "Stay," that reached Billboard's R&B Top 40 list. Another single, "Sexy Love," earned Ne-Yo a 2007 Soul Train award for Best R&B/Soul or Rap New Artist. One of the album's major hits, "So Sick," crossed over to reach the number-one position on Billboard's Pop Top 40 list. In My Own Words was followed in 2007 by Ne-Yo's second album, Because of You, a tribute to his pop music hero, Michael Jackson. The album's title cut won the Music of Black Origin award for best song of 2007.
As Ne-Yo's reputation as a songwriter continued to spread, a number of major music stars sought him out, not only R&B and hip-hop artists, such as Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé, and Rihanna, but also world famous pop stars, such as Celine Dion and Whitney Houston. Ne-Yo continued to draw on his personal experience to help him write meaningful lyrics. "Let Me Love You" had been inspired by an evening spent comforting a heartbroken friend, while songs for female stars, such as "Irreplaceable," which had been a top-ten hit for Beyoncé, were born out of conversations with his mother, sisters, and aunts about a woman's view of life and love.
Though Ne-Yo's music has a twenty-first century style and flavor, he has also been inspired by his predecessors, including Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis Jr. As a child, he developed his voice by listening to his mother's albums, especially pop classics such as Jackson's Off the Wall and Stevie Wonder's Hotter Than July. As he began writing his own songs, his goal became to create songs that would become classics themselves.
A well-rounded artist, who values originality and innovation over repeating a successful formula, Ne-Yo has taken risks to expand his career. In 2004, along with Reynell Hay, he helped found Compound Entertainment, an Atlanta, Georgia, based music production company where, besides writing and performing, he has begun learning the technical skills of record production. Along with writing songs and performing on his own albums, Ne-Yo has also made guest appearances on a number of albums, including Ghostface Killah's 2006 Fishscale album. He made his film debut as Mixx in the 2006 David Petrarca movie Save the Last Dance 2, followed in 2007 by a role in Stomp the Yard, directed by Sylvain White.
After another series of songwriting triumphs, including Rihanna's "Take a Bow" and Jennifer Hudson's "Spotlight," Ne-Yo released his third album, Year of the Gentleman, in September 2008. Propelled by the hits "Closer," the Grammy-winning "Miss Independent," and "Mad," the set eventually went platinum, which made Ne-Yo three for three in that regard. Ne-Yo then went relatively quiet for a brief period but returned in 2010 with Libra Scale, an album inspired by science fiction and comic books, as well as Stevie Wonder's and Michael Jackson's most ambitious recordings. It debuted in the Top Ten. He maintained his mainstream presence as a featured artist on Pitbull's "Give Me Everything," Young Jeezy's "Leave You Alone," and Calvin Harris' Grammy-nominated "Let's Go," among a handful of minor hits.
In November 2012, after he signed to Motown and was named the label's Senior Vice President of A&R, Ne-Yo released R.E.D. ("Realizing Every Dream"). The album found him continuing to embrace dance-pop while maintaining his connection to R&B. It debuted at number four on the Billboard 200. The singer spent much of 2013 collaborating with other artists, including Akon, David Guetta, Cher Lloyd, and Celine Dion. The build-up to Non-Fiction, Ne-Yo's sixth studio album, started during the first half of 2014 with the release of "Money Can't Buy," a single featuring Jeezy that charted outside the Top 40 of the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Additional collaborative singles with Juicy J (the platinum hit "She Knows") and Pitbull ("Time of Our Lives") followed shortly thereafter. The parent album arrived in January 2015 with a Top Ten chart showing. Later in the year, he added to a previously short list of minor acting credits with appearances in Sharknado 3 and on Empire.
Featured collaborations with the likes of Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike ("Higher Place"), Yunel and J Alvarez ("Sin Miedo"), and T-Pain ("Marry You") arrived as Ne-Yo semi-regularly made television appearances as a judge on programs such as America's Got Talent and World of Dance. In mid-2017, he began releasing singles in anticipation of his seventh album, including the tropical-flavored "Push Back." Parent release Good Man arrived the following June and entered the Billboard 200 at number 33. In 2019, while he was still involved with World of Dance and active as an actor -- including a role on Step Up: High Water and a guest appearance on Sherman's Showcase -- Ne-Yo released his first holiday album, Another Kind of Christmas. Several tracks arrived in 2020, including "Over Again" with Charly Black, "U 2 Luv" with Jeremih, and "Pinky Ring" featuring O.T. Genasis. He followed the 2021 EP, What Was, with another single, "What If."
The Tin Man
On December 3 2015, Ne-Yo portrayed the Tin Man in The Wiz Live! Originally trying out for the Scarecrow, He was later asked to take a look at the tinman's costume and show how he'd portray the character. He was later given the role to the Tin Man while the role of the Scarecrow was given to Ne-Yo's good friend Elijah Kelley.
He was once a normal human man, he was even in love with a beautiful woman named Bertha, but Evamene the Wicked Witch of The East had a crush on him also. Before he could tell her he wasn't interested, She saw him and his girlfriend kissing in the forest and she cast a spell on him turning him into tin. Thankful after hearing of Evamene's demise, He joins Dorothy and The Scarecrow to see The Wizard in order to regain his heart so he can love again.
Ne-Yo has another character before Oz, one of Aunt Em's farmhands (homage to Hickory from The Wizard of Oz). He wears a metal brace on his leg, foreshadowing the character he will soon portray later in the show.
Ne-Yo and Elijah Kelley wrote a new song for the show titled " We Got It "
In an interview Ne-Yo stated that his inspiration for the Tin Man's accent was from his uncles.
Gallery
Discography
- In My Own Words (2006)
- Because of You (2007)
- Year of the Gentleman (2008)
- Libra Scale (2010)
- R.E.D. (2012)
- Non-Fiction (2015)
- Good Man (2018)
- The Escape (2022)
Credit
Ne-Yo's performance as the Tinman earned him a Critics' Choice Awards Nomination for Best Supporting Actor In a Movie Made For Television Or Limited Series, but he lost to Jesse Plemons, who won for Fargo.