Fabolous joins R&B crooner onstage for new collabo 'Make Me Better.'
Panties and roses thrown at their feet, the occasional fan who darts past security and makes it onstage: Performers generally keep entertaining audiences through it all. On Saturday, however, Ne-Yo was stopped in his tracks.
The man with the #1 album in the country, Because of You, was 15 minutes into his headlining show at Utopia's Paradise Theater in the Bronx when he told his DJ to end the music. Somehow, a woman had made her way onto a structure above the stage and had scaled it almost to the top, about a 35-foot drop to the floor. During "When You're Mad," the third song in Ne-Yo's set, security guards began to convene. Someone whispered into Ne-Yo's ear, and the R&B star looked up. He then signaled his DJ to be silent and addressed the fan.
"You gotta get down from there, ma, you might hurt yourself," he said calmly.
The woman quickly heeded his advice, climbed down to the balcony area and was escorted out by security.
"Moving right along ... " Ne-Yo said with a nervous laugh as soon as the woman was out of danger. "Damn!"
Back to our regularly scheduled program. Ne-Yo, dressed simply in a white V-neck T-shirt and jeans, put the focus on his songwriting during the show, reminding the fans that a couple of records they might know actually came from his pen.
A recording of Rihanna's "Unfaithful" began to play: "I don't wanna hurt him anymore/ I don't wanna take away his life/ I don't wanna be a murderer."
Then the music from Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable" kicked in, getting a louder sing-along reaction from the audience: "To the left, to the left."
Introducing the third record, Ne-Yo told the audience he was going to play something new, and the music to Fabolous' "Make Me Better" came on.