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New Jack Swing isn’t so new anymore. But it still swings plenty.
Keith Sweat plans to prove it when he performs a Valentine’s Day show at Piere’s Entertainment Center. It starts at 8 p.m. Saturday.
The heyday of the R&B genre dubbed New Jack Swing happened in the late ’80s and early ’90s. But lots of people are still in love with the music.
“To me, there’s nothing like their sound today,” says Christina Muhammad, a 29-year-old Raleigh, N.C., teacher who attended a New Jack Swing tour last summer that featured Sweat, Bell Biv DeVoe and Tony! Toni! Toné!
“You don’t hear anybody like that today. They all had their own unique sound back then. Now, everybody sounds alike. I just like them, because their songs are hot.”
Sweat, previously a Wall Street brokerage assistant, dropped his first hit, “Make It Last Forever,” in 1987, selling almost 3 million copies and making him something of a household name. Over the next 10 years, he recorded several hits and toured with reunited R&B powerhouse New Edition, which includes the members of Bell Biv Devoe, and New Jack pioneer Teddy Riley.
The crooner says acts that became identified with the New Jack Swing sound are still popular because they came from an age when musicians had to put on a show and perform. Today’s acts just can’t move the way the older folks do, Sweat says.
“Those things separate the real entertainers and the fake ones,” Sweat says. “I don’t proclaim to be better than anyone, but I come from a time when people would go out and perform and leave people feeling good about how they spent their money.”
The New York native says when his genre of music was born, black music was shifting from an R&B focus to hip-hop. Acts such as Sweat, Bell Biv DeVoe and Guy took traditional R&B singing and mixed it with rap’s strong beats. That mixture, he said, is timeless.
“People who listen don’t feel like it’s dated,” Sweat says. “You can listen right now, and it won’t sound any different.”
