R&B singer Ne-Yo was unmasked as the winner of The Masked Singer in the season 10 finale on Wednesday night.
Ne-Yo, 44, performed Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” and Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” to beat out fellow finalists Donut (John Schneider), Gazelle (Janel Parrish) and Sea Queen (Macy Gray).
The father-of-7 explained why he chose to perform disguised as a heifer (a young female cow that hasn’t given birth yet).
He said he picked the busty bovine costume because host Nick Cannon and judges Nicole Scherzinger and Robin Thicke are friends of his, therefore he wanted the perfect disguise that would fool them.
Ne-Yo’s heifer wore a retro-style apron dress with matching headscarf, bedazzled red framed glasses and red lipstick.
“I have a personal relationship with Robin Thicke, personal relationship with Nicole Scherzinger, personal relationship with Nick Cannon,” Ne-Yo told People.com. “I knew that if anybody was going to guess who I was, it was going to be one of those three, if not all three of them, especially once I started singing. My singing voice, it’s somewhat distinctive. So I was trying to figure out any possible way to throw them that much further off my scent.”
“When the producers came to me with the costume, they were like, ‘We want you to be a cow, but we’re going to give you a choice. You can be a male cow or potentially, maybe, if you want, a female cow.’ I instantly was like, ‘Oh, female cow, let’s go. Let’s do the female cow, all day,'” he said.
“It gave me the opportunity to step outside my wheelhouse a little bit,” Ne-Yo added. “As a male cow, I could probably still dance like me. I’m definitely going to sound like me. And I was like, yeah, I’ll get caught quick like that. But as a female cow, I got huge breasts and hips and the whole nine, so I can’t move the way Ne-Yo would normally move. And it gave me the opportunity to do a little acting.”
Ne-Yo said growing up in a house full of females made it easier for him to move like a female would.
“I grew up in a house full of females — my mother, my sister, my grandmother, five aunts and me until I was 16 — so the female mannerisms were not a difficult thing at all.”
Watch the video below.
