Trey Songz Billboard Cover Story

Five years ago, a newly signed Trey Songz couldn’t afford to hire a traveling barber to braid his hair. Instead, he had to resort to locals to keep up his tresses — a circumstance he wasn’t exactly pleased with. “I couldn’t maintain one person to do it all the time,” Songz recalls. “I had to find people around town and most of the time I wouldn’t even like them.” Today, not only is his long hair gone, but Songz’ budget allows for a groomer and a personal stylist to hit the road with him, among other perks. This is in large part due to his sexually charged 2009 album, “Ready,” which has sold 778,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan; spawned five hit singles; and drew favorable comparisons to the past decade’s two most enduring and influential R&B stars, Usher and R. Kelly. Now, with the release of new album “Passion, Pain and Pleasure,” due Sept. 14 on Songbook/Atlantic Records, the 25-year-old Songz has positioned himself to not only make a run for the crown of King of R&B, but to enjoy the sort of crossover success that consistently and frustratingly eludes so many male R&B singers.

Before Songz became an arena-touring, multiple-hits-tallying, tossed-panty-attracting star, he was working hard just to get noticed by consumers. The Virginia Beach, Va.-born singer’s debut album, 2005’s “Gotta Make It,” has sold 395,000 U.S. copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and 2007’s “Trey Day,” which gave him his first No. 1 hit, “Can’t Help but Wait,” has moved only 344,000 units.
The success of “Ready” came about in part because of the groundwork Songz laid down by steadily touring the country. “By the time he wrote for ‘Ready,’ ” Atlantic Records Group chairman/COO Julie Greenwald says, “he was an accomplished touring artist who knew what audiences wanted from him. His confidence was way up.”

Moreover, Songz was willing to submit himself to the kind of wholesale reinvention that’s usually the provenance of single-named female pop stars: He changed his look from head to toe — lopping off those braids, for starters — put crooning about love on the back burner and started singing about sex. Lots and lots of sex.

“The public likes generic more than they like to admit, so that’s what I gave them — I gave them sexual singles and they ate it up,” Songz says about the string of blatantly sexed-up hits from “Ready.” “I gave them two whole albums before this one — on one I talked about a mother’s love for her son and a father not being there, and on the other I made a song about safe sex. They were well accepted but not as much as the records on ‘Ready.’ The singles were purposely very sexual to capture people’s attention.”

“Trey directed his lyrics,” Greenwald says. “No one gave them to him or said, ‘This is what you should do.’ We can’t take any credit for that. We helped expose him, but he wrote what he wanted to write.”

Songz didn’t find it compromising to peddle sex to become a bigger star. In fact, he feels “Ready” wasn’t any more sexual than his previous albums.

“People say this album was highly sexual, but the first two albums were just as sexual,” he says. “If you listen to the ‘Ready’ album, there’s ‘Love Lost,’ ‘Black Roses,’ ‘Yo Side of the Bed’ — all songs that had nothing to do with sex, but were overlooked because they weren’t the first few singles.”

Songz’ world’s-greatest-lover persona didn’t catch on until the summer 2009 leak of the hilariously boastful “I Invented Sex,” on which he sang, “Girl when I get you to the crib, upstairs to the bed . . . when I pull back them sheets, and you climb on top of me/Girl you gonna think I invented sex.” And to think the track wasn’t even supposed to be a single.

“We wrote the song and sent it over to [Songz] because I thought the song was a hit and a good fit,” songwriter Carlos “Los DaMystro” McKinney says. “He demoed it, but because of politics and bullshit, [the song wasn’t going to be released]. It actually leaked, and after they saw the reception it got, that’s when they decided to add it.”

“Certain people at the label didn’t believe in the record,” Songz explains. “It was said the chorus was complicated and wouldn’t do well in research at radio. We were asked to change the chorus so that the line ‘I invented sex’ came earlier. I wanted it to be a single and the label wasn’t onboard with that until after the record began to move on its own.”

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