What’s Next: ‘I’m Just Eternally Grateful For It All’

Before Highway 79 makes its official debut, Ne-Yo will return to Music City for Nashville's Star-Spangled Bash on the Fourth of July. Ryan Seacrest is hosting the all-star show, which also includes Brothers Osborne, Clint Black, Little Big Town, Reba McEntire, Tim McGraw, The All-American Rejects, Boyz II Men, Elizabeth Nichols, Emily Ann Roberts, John Crist, Lauren Daigle, Nick Jonas, and Sublime. The three-hour, televised event, Disney Celebrates America: Nashville’s Star-Spangled Bash, will air live from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. CT on Saturday, July 4 on ABC, ABC News Live, which streams on Disney+ and Hulu, the ESPN App, Freeform, FX and NatGeo. Ne-Yo’s Fourth of July performance arrives as he continues his co-headlining tour with Akon. Ne-Yo said the shows have been “truly amazing.” They were “nostalgic” while simultaneously hinting at what’s next for both artists. Ne-Yo admitted he was “a little worried” about how the audience would receive his country-inspired music; however, fans sang along and “it felt good,” he shared.

“I feel like my fans are very versatile,” he said. If you like R&B music and pop music and electronic music, you can all come to the same one concert and now we've added the country genre to that as well. So it's just one big party full of feel-good music. Everybody's invited. But you have to make it you though. I feel like that's the part that people miss when people try to jump genres and do other forms of music, it's like, OK, but it still has to be you. It has to be you doing this type of music as opposed to you pretending to be something you're not. …I think the thing that makes it the barrier breaker that it is when it's genuine, when it's you being who you are, just being who you are for this genre, being who you are for that genre.

“Blessed. (I feel) Blessed,” Ne-Yo said when asked how he feels as he looks ahead to what’s next. “Man, I feel like attention spans are getting shorter. The world is getting weirder. They love you one second. They hate you the same millisecond of that same second. And for me to be rocking still, not only just surviving but thriving 20 some odd years in, it just goes to show that regardless of trend, fad or whatever the case may be, when you stay true and genuine and authentic to who you are and what you do the way you do it, then sky's the limit. ...I try to lock myself into timeless things so that I in fact remain timeless and I guess I'm doing it all right. I guess I'm doing it right because I'm still here,” he said. “But again, every day it's me thanking God that I get to love my job because I know people that don't. I know people my age and older that hate what they do for a living and that is not my reality. So I'm just eternally grateful for it all.”

Highway 79 will release on July 10.

Dave Roberts