When Ne-Yo first came to Nashville in 2012 to record “She Is” with Tim McGraw for Ne-Yo’s album R.E.D., he says he immediately connected with the city’s relaxed writing and recording style.

“That’s when I realized it’s done a little different in Nashville,” Ne-Yo tells Billboard. “I was expecting to pull up to a studio, but I pulled up to Tim and Faith [Hill]’s home. Tim’s at the door with no shoes on. Faith is in the kitchen, and she made food for everybody, and we just sat in the living room and talked about life and songs. Tim’s always been super supportive of me, just an all-around good dude.”

With his first full-fledged, country-inspired album Highway 79, which released July 10 on HSG Ventures/10K Projects, Ne-Yo set out to recreate that same laid-back feel in the studio. “I was like, ‘I want that vibe all over again,’” he says.

Ne-Yo spent four months in Nashville, writing with artists, writers and producers including Luke Laird, Breland, Chuck Harmony, Claude Kelly, Dave Cohen and Lady A’s Charles Kelley. He previewed the album’s blend of R&B and soul sounds with songs including the tender “Simple Things” and the party anthem “Up Out and Gone.”

“When I decided I wanted to do something country-inspired, right away the thought was to go to Nashville. It just didn’t make sense to try to do something in the country vein without touching the mecca of country music,” he says. “We didn’t go into the studio trying to make hits. We wanted to make music that people related to — regular people, everybody.”

Those sessions produced songs like “If I Roped the Moon,” inspired by a line his co-writer Kelley brought to the session: “If I rope the moon, you would still want the stars.” “It’s such a classic country metaphor,” Ne-Yo says. “Without even hearing the full song, you hear that line, and you feel something right away.”

Ne-Yo also collaborated with Breland on the high-energy “Dance Right Now.”

“That was the only real preset thing we did in regard to the music,” Ne-Yo says. “With every session, I wanted to go in and just do whatever felt right. But for this session, I was like, ‘I got a couple slow situations. I needed something with some tempo.’ So, the music kind of came first, then from there we just started brainstorming on what the subject matter was going to be. The premise of the whole song is meeting someone in a nightclub, and it’s like, “I could sit here and try to figure out who you are, or you can sit there and try to figure out who I am — or we could just dance and worry about all of that other stuff later.”

It was Ne-Yo’s mother who helped spark the idea for the album title for Highway 79, a nod to the road that connects Ne-Yo’s hometown of Camden, Arkansas (two hours south of Little Rock) with Bearden, Arkansas, where his extended family lived.

“It was like double-wides, trailer parks, the whole nine,” Ne-Yo says of growing up in Arkansas before his family later relocated to Las Vegas. “I’ll say my love for the stage was definitely born in Las Vegas, but my heart and who I am as a person was birthed and nurtured in Arkansas.”

He remembers loving the storytelling aspect of songs such as Reba McEntire’s 1991 version of Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy.”

“’Fancy’ was the first country song I ever heard in my life,” Ne-Yo recalls. “I wasn’t double digits yet, that’s for certain. First, Reba’s voice, then just the story of it. I remember when my mom brought that song home, I was hooked on it for five days straight.”

Ne-Yo also discovered Kenny Rogers through his love of the music of Lionel Richie, who wrote Rogers’ 1980 country hit “Lady.” He since became a fan of Garth Brooks. “I even love the Chris Gaines thing when he did that,” Ne-Yo says. “I used to think, ‘He has the kind of voice that he can do R&B if he wanted to,’ and then he did that, and I’m like, ‘See?’’

“Country music has songs about the not-so-glamorous part of life, and being just a regular person,” he adds of his affinity for the genre. “You can have the truck and the 9-to-5 [job] and that’s okay. It’s like R&B and hip-hop music, some of it kind of got to this place where you got to be so cool all the time, have all this money, the women got to love you, and you drive this fast car, all these things and that’s just not the reality of 90% of the world. That cool thing can get exhausting. The coolest person I’ve ever met is not that person behind closed doors — they are just a regular person at that point.”

Ne-Yo made several appearances around Nashville leading up to the release of his new album, including making his debut on the Grand Ole Opry in November. That performance included renditions of Ne-Yo’s 2006 pop/R&B hit “So Sick” and a collaboration with The War and Treaty on a version of Rascal Flatts’ “Bless the Broken Road.”

“It’s not a small thing to step into that circle,” Ne-Yo said of his Opry debut. “If they love you there, you did something right. I was a little nervous, but I got up there, did what I did, and it was standing ovation, just open arms and it felt good to be accepted that way. It was an amazing experience.”

Looking ahead, Ne-Yo says he would love to work with The War and Treaty on new music and work with McGraw again (he attempted to work with McGraw again on the Highway 79 project, but says the two artists’ schedules didn’t align).

He’s certain of one thing about Highway 79: there is more where that came from.

“This will not be my last country-inspired album,” Ne-Yo says.