Ne-Yo

Ne-Yo was raised solely by his mother in Las Vegas, Naveda. His first girlfriend was Moneta Shaw with whom he got engaged as well. She gave birth to his two children named Madilyn Grace Smith and a son, Mason Evan, on November 12, 2010 and October 9, 2011 respectively.

Later on Ne-Yo separated from Moneta Shaw and announced that he is engaged to Crystal Renay. On March 15, 2016, Crystal gave birth to their son who they named as Prince Shaffier Chimere Jr.

Back in 2008, Ne-Yo was once arrested for fast driving in Georgia. He was driving at a speed of over 100 miles per hour and that too without the driving license. For breaking the traffic rules, he was sentenced to 24 hours community service and had to pay a fine of $1000.

Ne-Yo was born as Shaffer Chimere Smith on October 18, 1979, in Camden, Arkansas. His mother is African-American and his father is of Afro-American and Chinese descent. Both his parents were musicians.

His mother separated from her husband and moved to Las Vegas with her young son in hope of better life. At a very young age, Shaffer Chimere Smith began to develop his skills in song writing. His mother motivated him to work on his skills and pursue his passion as his career.

He joined the Las Vegas Academy to polish his skills and simultaneously joined an R&B group called Envy with a stage name "GoGo". Though the group disbanded in 2000, Smith continued to write songs for other artists.

The nick name “Ne-Yo" was given to him by a producer named Big D Evans with whom he once worked. Evans felt that Ne-Yo sees music as Neo sees the matrix, thus named him so.

Ne-Yo entered the music and recording industry when he was still a teenager. He began his career as a member of the Romford-based band called Envy, which disbanded in 2000.

Columbia Records signed Ne-Yo, but he could not work with them for long as he realized that his song “The Girl” has been shelved for more than a year. However, the same song led his future in music.

An R & B artist Marques Houston on hearing the song “The Girl” decided to record it for his own album. The release of this song in 2003 brought fame to Ne-Yo and we was being counted amongst the top most songwriters of America.

By 2004, Ne-Yo had already started writing for the famous artists, such as Faith Evans, Christina Milian, Teedra Moses's and B2K. In the same year Ne-Yo wrote a singer Mario’s debut song, “Let Me Love You", which proved to be a turning point in his career.

The song peaked at number one position on the Billboard Hot 100 and maintained the spot for nine long weeks. On the tremendous success of the album, Tina Davis, a former A&R rep for Def Jam Recordings, introduced Ne-Yo to L.A. Reid, Def Jam Recordings’ label head, who signed him for the company.

In 2004, Ne-Yo’s album “Let Me Love You” became an instant hit and was entitled as the eighth most successful single of the decade. The song won millions of hearts and brought fame to the artist.

In 2007, his first album with Def Jam Recordings - “In My Own Words”, turned out to be another hit. The album won a platinum certificate after selling around 4 million copies internationally.

The next album of Ne-Yo with Def Jam Recordings that followed was entitled ‘So Sick” .The album also became a great hit and sold more than 301,000 copies in US in the first week only.

On September 2, 2009, the greatest hits album of Ne-Yo, ‘The Collection’, was released in Japan. The album was ranked number four on Japan's Oricon weekly albums chart and sold 55,625 copies in the first week.