Make It Last Forever Turns 31: Revisiting A Modern Classic

This weekend marks the 31st anniversary of the release of Make It Last Forever, the debut album from R&B crooner Keith Sweat. Equal parts classic soul and hip hop courtesy of fellow Harlem native and album producer Teddy Riley, the seminal long player changed  R&B music.

Younger audiences weaned on their parents' record collections were coming of age and required a soundtrack of their own. Three million copies later-- they had one. By the end of '87 R&B was at a crossroads. Prince's Minneapolis Sound was the hottest ticket in town and the success of urban  superstars from the previous era had peaked and its soulful elements were toned down by the mid-Eighties. Albums like Thriller, Whitney Houston, Can't Slow Down, Purple Rain, Rapture, Control and Sign O' The Times  reflected a new creative bar and commercial appeal. 

 In his autobiography Howling At The Moon: The Odyssey of A Monstrous Music Mogul In An Age of Excess, Columbia Records chief Walter Yetnikoff expressed his disinterest in  promoting R&B albums with modest (but respectable) record sales of 250,000 copies. There were no need for the '70s joint venture label deals required to court black audiences to sell records. Labels with deeper pockets signed the biggest stars directly. It was survival of the fittest. For every act like Cameo and Kool and the Gang savvy enough to change with the times there were dozens of others who couldn't make the cut.

Films like The Big Chill (Friends before Friends) took the Sound of Young America to the big screen but its architects were nowhere in sight. Spawns of imitators showed up on MTV though. Katrena and the Waves (Walking on Sunshine) and ABC (When Smokey Sings) rode the Motown back beat to pop success while the iconic label soldiered on for a few more years until founder Berry Gordy did the unthinkable and sold the company.

Quiet storm group Maze's run of six consecutive gold albums did little to raise the group's profile beyond its loyal core fans. Label mate Freddie Jackson's long running string of number one singles dominated urban radio even though he was a virtual unknown to Capitol Records execs. Six years into his solo career, Luther Vandross was R&B's reigning king. Every album he released went  platinum or multi-platinum.  Although prolific as Stevie Wonder and artistically diverse as Donny Hathaway Epic Records had no intentions on making him its next crossover star.

There was also the bizarre industry role reversals. George Michael and Michael Bolton were successfully marketed as soul singer. Balladeer  Peabo Bryson was recast as a pop singer, reaching greater heights than he did with quiet storm staples like Feel The Fire. This was the climate when Keith Sweat entered the game at age 27.

From the jump Keith established himself as a trendsetter. Before Jay-Z's Marcy to Madison Square campaign, the Harlem native made the jump from the Grant projects to Wall Street as a commodities broker funding his own demos and singing in bands. Before future collaborators Ron Isley and Charlie Wilson experienced career makeovers as modernized R&B elder statesmen, Keith demonstrated the uncanny ability to link the older flavor with current musical trends. When CEO Andre Harrell was developing his urban swag model for Uptown Records, he cited Keith as the inspiration for the vibe he created for his own roster of artists.

Old enough to appreciate Blue Magic and  young enough to acknowledge hip hop, Sweat never chased trends, he absorbed them. His revolving cast of artists, writers and producers gave his career a chameleon-like quality, putting his stamp on the Best of Both Worlds concept before Hov and Kells. Even younger acts took notes. The ballads on Jodeci's Forever My Lady sounded like they could have been outtakes from the Make It Last Forever production vaults.

Where TeddyPendergrass' Teddy, Alexander O' Neal's Heresay and Babyface's It's No Crime albums were evenly divided between the uptempos and ballads, Make It Last Forever was constructed like an Isley Brothers' album. Pulsating uptempos gave way to a suite of dreamy ballads. The drums were loud and the bass was heavy. Rocking the boulevard to the budoir, it was powerful enough to pump in the ride yet potent enough for a night of love.

 Make It Last Forever combined the driving rhythms of Slave, the sex appeal of Teddy Pendergrass and the heavy bottom of rap music's drum sounds. It had something for everybody. For older music fans that loved Watching You and Just A Touch of Love, blistering album opener Something Ain't Right and lead single I Want Her were right on time. The slow burn of Come Go With Me and Turn Out The Lights was recaptured with How Deep Is Your Love. Keith's remake of the Dramatics' In The Rain sealed the deal introducing passionate love affirmations that would become a permanent Sweat trademark popularly known as begging. 

If an album cut deserved a video, Right and A Wrong Way deserved one. Depicting a night of seduction between a older man and his young lover, the passion builds and by the song's end you could just envision Keith winking at the camera as he sings the chorus to the Stylistics' first hit: You're a big girl now/no more daddy's little girl......

Keeping in tradition with soul music's classic era, the album featured pristine background vocals and lush and sweeping intros that could have been perfectly at home on Delphonics records. In the pocket grooves and instrumental breakdowns and solos recalled funky R&B anthems from days gone by. As each song faded out with  Keith's vocal refrains it felt like he was just getting warmed up. The album centerpiece was the title track, a duet with unknown singer Jacci McGhee. They were perfectly cast, delivering vocal theatrics capturing the chemistry of Rick and Tina's Fire and Desire. 

Album producer Teddy Riley and Keith Sweat created a masterpiece. Together they rewrote the industry rules of what R&B needed to be to win. Albums like Guy, Don't Be Cruel and In Effect Mode spawned a new generation of young stars. The production style was harder and required a different kind of voice from the genteel falsettos and tenors of yesteryear. Vocal texture was more important then technique. Singers like Sweat, Aaron Hall, Christopher Williams and Lee (Big Bub) Drakeford emerged as the New Jack Swing era's answer to the virile, masculine voices of Philly International.

 Keith would revisit the Make It Last Forever's formula a decade later with his self titled Keith Sweat. The singles Nobody and Twisted were back-to-back number one hits driving the album to four million in sales surpassing his debut.  Years later, a greatest hits packaged followed, featuring six of Forever's eight songs cementing the depth and popularity of the modern R&B era's first classic album.While the album's impact is quietly acknowledged and its ten, twenty and twenty-five year milestones have come and gone with little recognition, song for song it remains the best pure R&B album of the last 30 years.