SOHH SOULFUL

Poor Ne-Yo. Despite being twice platinum, writing hits for just about everybody in the industry and winning a gang of money from R.Kelly's hatin' ass, Ne-Yo ain't happy with his spot in the music game. In a recent AP interview the producer/singer/songwriter also known as Shaffer Smith aired out his beef. Check the excerpts below!

On being under-appreciated:

"I honestly don't feel that it's my music that's under-appreciated. I think that it's me that's under-appreciated. As an artist, period. 'Cause I look at it like -- OK, two multiplatinum albums. Yeah. Grammy. Two years in the game. I won my first Grammy off my second album, right? Multiple, multiple No. 1s for myself and for other people. However, (I've) never seen the cover of Vibe magazine. Never seen the cover of People magazine. Never seen the cover of, you know, Rolling Stone magazine. And won't. 'Cause these people feel that for whatever reason, because I'm a fully functional adult and not a heroin addict, that I won't sell magazines."

On who people expect him to be:

"Everybody wants me to be the (guy) who's (sleeping with) every celebrity woman in the industry. Everybody wants me to be this (guy) in the club, popping 17 bottles just because. Everybody wants me to be Diddy, and that's not me."

On revealing other sides of himself:

"And it's not that I haven't tried. But management, (the) label -- they feel that I've created this image for myself, this box for myself. And they want to keep me in this box. And I've told them, "Y'all don't understand there's so much more to me that you're not allowing me to show the world. Maybe if y'all allowed me to show these other sides of me, then (people) would pay more attention to me instead of saying, 'Oh, Ne-Yo. Oh great music, great songwriter -- what's Little Wayne doing?"

I think he has a great point. Ne-Yo constantly delivered, but who ever really gets excited about a new Ne-Yo song, or seeing him perform at an awards show? Chris Brown and Lil Wayne are constantly stealing his shine. Aight, I feel your pain Ne-Yo. No more gay jokes for the rest of the month. I promise!

While we're on the subject of multi-talented singers, there is a new artist on the scene named Josh X-an-tus who is a Julliard-trained singer/songwriter/pianist. He has a video with Jadakiss that I thought I would share with you. I know Josh is fairly new so I really want to know what you guys think of him and if you're interested in hearing more.

Josh X-an-tus ft. Jadakiss "Let's Ride"

What do you think? Talk to me y'all!