With a dozen solo albums to his credit, the first of which came out in 1987, R&B crooner Keith Sweat is a bona fide legend. Few male artists in the genre have been able to match his longevity and staying power. With every Keith Sweat album, you know exactly what you're going to get, because even though his professional career has spanned parts of four decades, his creative growth as an artist came to a halt somewhere around 1992. And his latest, 'Til the Morning, which was released in the U.S. Nov. 8, 2011, is typical Sweat; sexually-charged, one-dimensional songs expressly intended as musical Viagra.
Cliched, Unoriginal
The fact that one of the most modern, musically adventurous songs on Keith Sweat's 'Til the Morning features T-Pain and heavy Auto-Tune usage is indicative of how stale and far behind the times Sweat's sound has become. The song, "To the Middle," is actually one of the highlights on an album full of cliched, unoriginal and occasionally limp songs. There's plenty of sexy talk here, but very little of it sounds genuinely warm or romantic. Instead, it sounds like Keith and his co-writers and producers sat down and calculated a formula consisting of everything they figured would work on women. The problem is, they neglected to include genuine heart and soul in their formula.
This is very much a by-the-numbers album, with typical songs about marriage proposals ("Ring Size"), excellent lovemaking ("High as the Sun," "Make You Say Ooh") and friends-into-lovers situations ("Knew It All Along," which features Johnny Gill and the late Gerald Levert, the other two former members of Keith's side group, LSG). But even Gill and Levert's contributions don't add much spice to this 12-song collection, nor does Coko of SWV, who duets with Keith on another wedding/marriage song, "My Valentine." Again, when the highlight of your album is a T-Pain appearance, your album's in bad shape.
The bottom line is this: if you've been a devoted Keith Sweat since the '80s or '90s, you'll get exactly when you love from him, over and over again. But if you're not a fan or are on the fence, there isn't much here that would pull you over to his side of that fence, at least not for more than a few minutes or so.
This is very much a by-the-numbers album, with typical songs about marriage proposals ("Ring Size"), excellent lovemaking ("High as the Sun," "Make You Say Ooh") and friends-into-lovers situations ("Knew It All Along," which features Johnny Gill and the late Gerald Levert, the other two former members of Keith's side group, LSG). But even Gill and Levert's contributions don't add much spice to this 12-song collection, nor does Coko of SWV, who duets with Keith on another wedding/marriage song, "My Valentine." Again, when the highlight of your album is a T-Pain appearance, your album's in bad shape.
The bottom line is this: if you've been a devoted Keith Sweat since the '80s or '90s, you'll get exactly when you love from him, over and over again. But if you're not a fan or are on the fence, there isn't much here that would pull you over to his side of that fence, at least not for more than a few minutes or so.