Masked Singer Season 10 Winner NE-YO Shares Why He Decided to Perform as a 'Busty' Female Cow (Exclusive)

He may be so sick of love songs, but NE-YO doesn’t mind the ones that helped him win The Masked Singer season 10 as Cow.

NE-YO, 44, tackled Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” and Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” on Wednesday’s Masked Singer finale to beat out fellow finalists Donut (John Schneider), Gazelle (Janel Parrish) and Sea Queen (Macy Gray).

“We picked songs that were slightly outside of my wheelhouse, songs that you wouldn't regularly expect to hear me singing,” NE-YO tells PEOPLE. “I was very, very adamant about, ‘Listen guys, I do not want to get discovered quickly. Let's figure out ways to throw them off.’ ”

The three-time Grammy winner considers host Nick Cannon and judges Nicole Scherzinger and Robin Thicke friends of his, hence why he wanted to try extra hard to conceal his identity. Scherzinger, 45, and Thicke, 46, did guess NE-YO early on, but that didn’t impact their experience on the show.  

“It's been, in a word, fun,” NE-YO says. “I had an absolute ball with it. It was a lot of fun stepping outside of the NE-YO box for a minute and being somebody else. I genuinely enjoyed the experience and I would do it again if I felt like I could get away with it.”

The father of seven shares why he opted for a female cow outfit, which song selection challenged him the most and why he doesn’t mind being slightly out of the spotlight.

PEOPLE: What drew you to The Masked Singer?

NE-YO: Literally just the fun of it. It's a lot of fun to watch, to sit and try to figure out who's behind that costume, to pick your favorites. I pride myself on how good I am at guessing who's who. I've definitely been fooled a couple of times. And it's something that you can do with every generation of your family. Me and my mom would sit and watch, me and my kids watched it before. Everybody can sit down at the same time and watch this show and enjoy it, and that's just rare nowadays. I've kind of prided myself throughout my career on doing music that everybody can listen to at once if they felt like it. This just puts a magnifying glass on something I've been trying to do my entire career.

Since you have been in the industry for a while, what do you get recognized for most these days?

I have always considered myself a people's champ. I am the guy that you might catch at Target on my own, and I think my fans have come to know and appreciate this about me. They walk up, they ask for pictures and then they go on their way. My days of being chased through the mall have long gone, which I don't have a problem with at all. I don't feel like running. Now what I get more than anything when I'm noticed is people walk up and go, "Hey, you know what? If you were a little bit taller, you would look just like NE-YO." And I'm like, “Who is this six-foot NE-YO running around stealing my shine? I don't understand it.”

Who knew you were doing The Masked Singer?

My mom and my kids figured it out right away from the first performance. They were like, “Yo, when did you film The Masked Singer?” I'm like, “I don't know what you're talking about.” I tried to put it up the best I could, but they caught it right away. They knew.

Why did you choose to dress as a female cow?

I have a personal relationship with Robin Thicke, personal relationship with Nicole Scherzinger, personal relationship with Nick Cannon. 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.”

How did performing as a female Cow differ your approach?

It gave me the opportunity to step outside my wheelhouse a little bit. 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. 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.

Did you find it difficult to move as Cow?

Challenging, but in the most fun way possible. She's a busty girl, so I got on this huge bra full of padding. I got padded hips. But it actually helped because I couldn't dance the way I would normally dance. And it was very, very hot, super hot. They were on standby with fans the whole time. And I couldn't see almost at all. Where the mouth is on the Cow is pretty much where my eyes are, so it's I could see out of the mouth a little bit, and then the black patches on the cheeks of the mask, I could kind of see through those a little bit. But for the most part, your vision is almost completely blocked.

There were a couple performances where there was stairs involved and I'm like, “You guys must want me to break my neck. I can't see. How we're going to pull this off?” But we made it happen. That was honestly the hardest part, just being able to see where I was going.

Which song that you performed did you find most challenging?

Some were more difficult than others. Some were more fun than others. Disco Night was one song that kind of struck a chord with me. "Ring my Bell," it's one of my mom's favorite songs. I can genuinely remember as a kid watching her and my aunt dance around in the kitchen to that song, so that song particular was one that struck a chord with me. There was an Imagine Dragons song that I did that was a little harder to do. None of the songs are really difficult, they just weren't songs that I could flex the NE-YO muscle on. I enjoyed stepping outside of my typical box a little bit. It was a lot of fun.

Where will you be storing the Golden Mask trophy?

The Golden Mask trophy is going to live in the same place that my Grammys and every other award that I've ever won lived, and that is at my mother's home. My mom has this huge cabinet full of my accomplishments, and we have moved things around and prepared a space for that big, beautiful golden Masked Singer trophy, right next to the Grammys.

What’s next for you after winning The Masked Singer?

I have an international tour coming up that starts in March, It's the Champagne and Roses Tour. I'm putting together a new album right now as we speak. It doesn't have a name yet, but I'm literally in the studio every other day working on that. And as I always say, keep your eyes to the sky, ears to the ground. You will hear me, see me. I will be around just doing what I love to do.

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The Masked Singer can be streamed on Hulu.