Though he came of age during the heyday of the bad-boy R&B singer, Ne-Yo’s allegiances have always belonged to an earlier, more chivalrous era of pop music. Over his first four albums, the singer honed an image not just as the best dressed, best behaved guy in the room, but as the heir to the Rat Pack’s dapper legacy, embodying an ideal of class and sophistication that disappeared generations ago. A decade in, however, Ne-Yo’s class act routine doesn’t carry the novelty it once did, and his spotless image has never felt more at odds with the times. Today listeners don’t crave perfectionists; they prefer flawed idols. And so on his sixth album Non-Fiction, Ne-Yo dares to rumple his exquisitely pressed suit a bit and join his contemporaries at the strip club. He stops short of letting his freak flag fly, but for the first time he’s hinting that he may actually have a freak flag in his repertoire.
Of course, being the cautious sort, he gives himself some cover. In interviews, Ne-Yo has said for inspiration that he reached out to fans on social media to share their experiences, so that he could write what he describes on the album intro as fictionalized versions of "true stories about real people." That disclaimer frees him to explore salacious subject matter he wouldn’t allow himself under the assumption of autobiography: kinks, empty sex, the wanton desires of average schlubs. On "Story Time", about a clumsy attempt to twist his lover’s arm into a threesome, he even makes a vaguely Ralph Kramdenian threat of physical violence when his partner suggests bringing another man into the fold. Though he swiftly clarifies he’s just joking—even Ne-Yo’s fictional creations would never seriously entertain such an idea—it’s the most objectionable line he’s ever written. Thankfully, it’s also an aberration. Rather than straining credibility by reinventing himself as a dangerous wild card, Ne-Yo brings in voices like Schoolboy Q, Jeezy, and Juicy J to impart some hardened masculinity for him.
For all his character acting, on Non-Fiction’s most sharply written songs, Ne-Yo couldn’t be playing anybody but himself. "She Said I’m Hood Tho" finds the star drawn to a brassy nail salon worker who isn’t shy about telling him he’s fallen off. Despite the mutual attraction, the chasm between their social castes leaves both of them feeling insecure. Anxieties about his career standing also creep into "Everybody Loves/The Def of You", where he can’t shake a girl who’s less interested in him than his celebrity connections. "Only time I hear from her is right around the BET awards, VMA, AMAs and Billboards," he laments. "She be like, ‘If you going can I come with ya? And can you ask Trey if I can get a picture?’"
Though Non-Fiction only occasionally rises to the high songwriting standards of Ne-Yo’s seamless 2008 album Year of the Gentleman, it does correct some of the faults of his last record, 2012’s R.E.D., where the R&B songs and the Euro-dance songs played as if they’d been written for entirely separate projects. Save for "Time of Our Lives", a Pitbull party anthem that slots into Non-Fiction as conspicuously as a Six Flags commercial, this time Ne-Yo finds harmony between the two genres, including a particularly imaginative one on "Coming With You", a chic house throwback with shades of Michael Jackson. Where R.E.D. often played like an identity crisis, on Non-Fiction Ne-Yo makes the variety work in his favor. Over the 19 tracks on the album’s deluxe edition, he tries on an array of styles and personas, but even during his biggest stretches he never sounds anything less than comfortable in his own skin.
