After news reports circulated that Ne-Yo and his wife Crystal Smith had split, it was surprising to hear that divorce documents had been filed. The couple has been married for four years and seemed to be happily in love, but no one knows what goes on behind closed doors because they’ve managed to keep their personal life private. Ne-Yo shared the news in February while discussing his relationship status on a podcast, but soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to normal life as we knew it. The Grammy Award-winning singer-producer recently told Kendra G that the quarantine made him re-evaluate the important relationships in his life, including the one with his wife, Crystal Smith.

 
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“When you are faced with a pandemic, when you see people dying daily, bunches of people dying all the time, it really puts things into perspective for you,” the singer said. “Who’s there for you regardless of whatever. I have a handful of people like that on the face of the planet. So, when this thing went down and all of a sudden it ain’t safe to be outside, I said to myself, okay, if I gotta be inside, I wanna be inside with people that I know love beyond a shadow of a doubt and that I love beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

“Regardless to what me and Crystal was going through at the time, never did I ever say that I didn’t love her,” Ne-Yo continued. “I never had anything negative to say about her.” He added that even his latest single “Pinky Ring” that seems to address his divorce and newly-almost -single life wasn’t a diss record to his wife. “I didn’t say anything foul about her the whole time. It was just a record about what I was going through at the time and how I chose to deal with it.” Watch Ne-Yo discuss his relationship with his wife below.

Not long after announcing that he and his wife Crystal Smith planned to divorce, Ne-Yo stepped back into the music scene with a brand new single “Pinky Ring” featuring O.T. Genasis. The superproducer-singer-songwriter and his ex have been cordial in the media and during his visit to Pull Up with Joe Budden, Ne-Yo expounded on his personal life.

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“‘Pinky Ring’ is a song about taking lemons and turning them into lemonade,” the singer said. “It is about a situation that anybody can use as an excuse to be down and feel a way, but instead, taking it and letting it be a positive thing. Not allowing it to bring you down.” Joe didn’t seem too satisfied with the answer and wanted to know what Ne-Yo did that led to the breakup with his wife.

“Without incriminating myself, without incriminating her and without putting any negative connotation on this… I will say that neither one of us was exactly who we needed to be in order for this to last, and that’s why it didn’t. Bottom line,” Ne-Yo said. “That’s what it was. I own mine, she owns hers, and the craziest thing is there’s no beef, there’s no animosity, there’s no love lost because we both understand that.”

Budden wasn’t convinced that there’s no beef between Ne-Yo and Crystal and called the singer “oblivious to what’s going on.” Ney-Yo disagreed. Budden later talked about his struggle with getting his engagement ring back from his ex-fiancé Cyn Santana and was surprised to hear that Crystal gave her wedding ring to Ne-Yo without a problem. Budden revealed he had to legally wait for the courts to rule on the matter.

According to Ne-Yo, Crystal isn’t the type of person who would hold onto something in order to get back at him or make things difficult. “She’s never been petty like that,” Ne-Yo added. “She’s never been money petty like that. That’s not her.” Watch Ne-Yo and Joe Budden chop it up on Pull Up below.

Ne-Yo’s divorce from Crystal Smith was confirmed a few weeks ago and he has been giving us excuses to use the “Mr. Independent” pun ever since (a play on his 2008 hit “Miss Independent”, for those who didn’t catch on). Just a few days after this news was made official, Ne-Yo was spotted getting jiggy with belly dancers at a hookah bar. Now, another sighting of Ne-Yo celebrating the single life has been reported.

According to Page Six, the 40-year-old singer was partying it up at the Paradise Club inside NYC’s Edition hotel for the launch of Macy’s Good Brother Apparel. Ne-Yo himself posted photos from the evening on his Instagram page. If it wasn’t clear how much he was enjoying himself based on how hard he was smiling in the shots, he captioned them, “Better than I’ve ever been.” Being surrounded by (at least) five models and sipping Courvoisier cognac in a VIP section til 4 AM will have you feeling like that. Page Six‘s source also shared that Ne-Yo performed his new bachelor anthem, “Pinky Ring”, which features O.T. Genasis. “He was in good spirits, having fun with his friends and repeated the lyrics ‘turn wedding ring into a pinky ring’ while on stage,” said the witness.

Ne-Yo spoke on his split from Smith on the Private Talk podcast. “It’s not a sad thing,” he explained. “Long story short, I’m never gonna talk bad about her. I’m not that person. There’s nothing bad to say about her. She’s a fantastic woman. She’s the mother of my children and she’s always gonna be that. Long story short, she’s got demons just like everyone else, just like me. We realized our demons don’t mesh and until the both of us get ahold of our personal demons, it’s gonna be just difficult for us to stay married. That’s the end of that chapter, not the end of that book. Like I said, that’s the mother of my kids and I love her to death. We’re gonna be family forever.”