Image via Complex Original
Less than two weeks from now, Ne-Yo will release his fifth studio album, R.E.D., or Realizing Every Dream, on Nov. 6—Election Day. His reasoning behind the date: "Everyone will be out and about, doing important things, and since you going to be out anyway, you might as well pick up the album.” It's his first project with Motown Records after being appointed as the label's Senior Vice-President of A&R.
The LP features appearances from Fabolous, Diddy, Wiz Khalifa, Calvin Harris and Tim McGraw, but before it drops, Complex met up with Ne-Yo at NYC's Roc the Mic studios to talk about his wildest moments on the road. If you didn't think dude was living the rock star lifestyle, you were mistaken. Here are Ne-Yo's craziest tour stories.
As told to Lauren Nostro (@LAURENcynthia)
PRE-ORDER: Ne-Yo's R.E.D. on iTunes
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A Mother and Daughter's Indecent Proposal
“A mother and a daughter—actually the daughter walked up first, and asked for a picture. We were at the club, and my club going is not typical club going. I go to the club and I pretty much spend the whole night taking pictures. I don’t know how to say no.
“[The daughter] walked up, asked for a picture, I took a picture, and then as she was leaving, her mom walked up too. Her mom was like, ‘So this is Ne-Yo!’ and I’m like ‘Yeah, hey, how you doing? Nice to meet you.’ She was like, ‘You’re a lot cuter in person.’ I’m like, ‘Well, thank you.’ The daughter goes, ‘What are you doing after this?’ but she leaned in when she said it, as to what I assumed not to let her mom hear what she was saying. She was cute, she was clearly of age—she was in a club.
“So I told her, ‘Oh you know, I might be going back to the hotel’ and then the mom actually goes, ‘Hotel? Really? Mind if I join?’ And I’m like, ‘Woah! Wait a minute.’ At first I thought she was kidding, I thought she was being sarcastic like, ‘Okay, you're trying to sleep with my daughter.’ But she said it, and then her just gaze locked in, ‘Mind if I join?’
"I don’t remember what I said, because I was shocked by the fact. I looked at her, and then I looked at the daughter, and the daughter was giving me the same look, like, ‘Yes. This is what we do. This is how is goes down.’
“It didn’t go down, by the way. I was just completely in shock. It did not go down. That was the first proposal but definitely not the last. That was strange.”
An Overweight Lover's Lingerie
"I was on tour and I did a meet-and-greet before the show. This one woman walks up in the line, and she hands me a little gift bag. I’m like, ‘Oh, okay cool.’ Fans give me gifts, cool deal. So I do the show, right? I get backstage after the show, and I open up the bag, and it is lingerie. A couple different pieces of lingerie.
“I have gotten lingerie before, but this something completely different. Not only was it lingerie with pictures, but it was pictures of this woman, wearing these pieces of lingerie. And this was not a small woman. This was not a small woman, at all, to the point where some of the pictures, you can’t even see the lingerie. The thing is, I’m holding the lingerie like, ‘Okay, this is interesting’ and then I look at the picture and it’s ‘Ah! Damn, no, no, no!’
“The photos are burned into the back of my mind. I can’t get rid of the thought of the photos now. It was the thought that counted, but yeah, I couldn’t do it."
Autographing A Newborn Baby
"One woman walked up to me at a meet-and-greet with a baby who couldn’t have been any older than one year old, and she goes, ‘Sign this.’ I signed her paper, I signed her CD, and she’s like, ‘Could you sign my baby?’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ She’s like, ‘I don’t know, I just want you to sign my baby! Would you please?’ She’s begging me to sign her baby. I’m like, ‘Alright.’ I signed the baby’s arm. I felt bad about it afterwards. It was with a sharpie.
"It's a little strange to sign a baby. I once signed a prosthetic limb. If a person walks up to you with a prosthetic limb, you can’t say no! You can’t turn that person down. I don’t like signing money like, if people walk up to me with a hundred dollar bill, I don’t like that because that could be used for something.
"I really don’t like signing flesh because you take a shower and it’s gone. What’s the purpose? Let me sign something that you can hold on to. There was a girl in London who I signed her arm, and sure enough, she went and got it tattooed and hit me on Twitter. She actually hits me on Twitter every day. She is invested, indeed.”
Getting Flashed By Electrik Red
"The last show of every tour is always the show where everybody’s on point, because it’s the show where people take it upon themselves to do silly shit. There was one show where my drummer got off the drums and came on stage in a janitor’s outfit and was pretending to sweep up as I was performing. Just silly stuff like that.
"I went on tour with Electrik Red once and on the last show of the tour, I’m right at the end of a song and I turn around, ‘Bam!’ I stop the band, and I turn back around, and all four of them walk out on stage in heels and towels and they commence to turn their backs to the crowd, turn towards me, open up the towels, do a little shimmy, close the towels, and walk off the stage.
"They were just barely clothed. They might as well not have been clothed. I’m talking like napkins and dental floss type stuff. It threw me for a minute. I couldn’t get back into my flow for a second. It was kind of like, ‘I’m on stage, and there’s people here. Let me get right.’ That’s another one that was burned into the memory that I don’t mind so much. The big lingerie photographs haunt me. That? Cool with it.”
The Montreal Warrior
"We were in Montreal doing shows and again, it was the last show of the tour. We go to the club for the after party and there’s a group of girls that come back with us to the hotel. Everybody’s just hanging out in front of the hotel. I think it’s like five girls. This one girl in particular had on a gold dress. Beautiful girl, dark hair, just lovely.
“We’re sitting, talking, everybody’s chilling. All of a sudden, a truck pulls up. [Imitates brakes screeching.] This guy jumps out of the truck, charges towards the girl in the gold dress, grabs her by her hair, snatches her up, roughs her up, puts her in the truck, drives off. Mind you, he doesn’t say anything to anybody. He was clearly the boyfriend. Everybody’s like, ‘What the fuck just happened?’
"About 20 minutes passes, everybody goes back to what we’re doing. At this point we’re hanging out in the lobby. Who comes walking through the hotel? The girl in the gold dress. Now the dress is a little ruffled up, knees are a little bloody and scraped up, like she's clearly been through something. She comes back in like, ‘Hey guys!’ as if everything is all good, talking to people. We’re like, ‘Are you okay?’ She's like, ‘I’m fine, don’t worry.’ A good 10 minutes later, that noise again. [Imitates brakes screeching.]
"This guy rolls up in a truck with a bed in the back. The dude pulls up, heads through the lobby straight at her, picks her up, carries her out of the hotel, and they take off. This happened four different times. We’re in Montreal, so they’re speaking French, going back and forth arguing and what not.
“The last time she didn’t come back. We were praying that nothing seriously happened to her but it was confirmed that she was okay. The next time I was in Montreal, guess who shows up at the hotel? She wasn't wearing the gold dress, she was wearing something different, but she still had a few battle wounds from that experience.
“From that moment on, she was dubbed the ‘Montreal Warrior.’ For whatever reason she was going to get whatever she was trying to get by any means necessary. Four different times this dude snatched her up, pulled out of the hotel, and four different times she came back. Clearly I asked her about it next time I saw her. She was like, ‘He’s crazy, he just knows that I love you.’ This was her justification. I guess that’s what it is. Hilarity."
