Ne-Yo's interview with Shannon Sharpe on his "Club Shay Shay" platform is going viral, including Ne-Yo speaking about Jay-Z continuing to bring up him giving away "Let Me Love You" to Mario.
The 2004 song was a monster hit and remains Mario's biggest song, but Ne-Yo told Shannon that he wasn't a signed artist at the time that he wrote the song. He explained, "Shortly before the Def Jam situation happened I leaned on songwriting. I was just a songwriter so I wrote a song for Mario, [‘Let Me Love You’], so this song goes on and stays at number one for 12 or 13 weeks, something like that, becomes one of the most played songs in radio history."
After signing to Def Jam, Ne-Yo revealed that he met Jay-Z for the first time, and their interaction didn't go as Ne-Yo envisioned. He stated, "The first time I got to meet JAY-Z, I’d been signed for a couple months at this point. I walk into the room and he’s in there. It’s in L.A. Reid’s office. I walk in, ‘Hey it’s nice to meet you.’ He like, ‘Man, why you give that damn song away?’ Nice to meet you too bruh, cool. I’m Ne-Yo. ‘Why you give that damn song away?’ To this day, he yell at me about giving that damn song away. But I was just a songwriter when I wrote it, I didn’t write it for myself."
Ne-Yo then gave Mario his flowers, stating, "I’ll be the first to tell you that Mario got chops that I don’t. I ain’t got no shame in that, but I know that I got chops too. So yeah. I feel like it woulda worked either way."
