Following the breakthrough success of his socially conscious album What's Going On (1971), Let's Get It On helped establish Gaye as a sex icon and broadened his mainstream appeal.

Its erotic balladry, multi-tracking of Gaye's vocals, and seductive funk sound also influenced later R&B recording artists and producers, with the title track specifically helping pioneer the slow jam and quiet storm formats.

Among the most acclaimed LPs in history, it frequently appears on professional rankings of the greatest albums and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as a historically important recording.

Amid relocation and his lack of material, Gaye was struggling with his conscience, as well as dealing with expectations from his wife, Gordy's sister Anna.

He began incorporating his new outlook into his music, as initially expressed through the socially conscious album What's Going On, along with promotional photos of him wearing a kufi in honor of African traditional religions and his faith.

[5] In his book Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye, Gaye biographer David Ritz wrote of the singer's inspiration behind Let's Get It On: If the most profound soul songs are prayers in secular dress, Marvin's prayer is to reconcile the ecstasy of his early religious epiphany with a sexual epiphany.

[1] Following the earlier sessions in Detroit at Golden World, Gaye recorded at Hitsville West in Los Angeles from February to July 1973.

[3] It was originally written by Gaye as a religious ode to life, but Motown singer-songwriter Kenneth Stover re-wrote it as a more political first draft.

[3] Upon hearing Gaye's preliminary mix of Stover's draft, Townsend protested and claimed that the song would be better suited with sexual and romantic overtones, particularly "about making sweet love.

[13] Music journalist Jon Landau dubs the song "a classic Motown single, endlessly repeatable and always enjoyable".

It expands on the title track's sensual theme with political overtones: "won't you rather make love, children / as opposed to war, like you know you should.

For the 1986 'twofer' (with "What's Going On") CD reissue of the album, Motown recording engineers for the first time restored the missing verse which had been omitted from the LP.

[14] "You Sure Love to Ball" is one of Gaye's most sexually overt and controversial singles, with its intro and outro featuring moaning sounds made by a man and woman engaged in sex.

[19] Jon Landau of Rolling Stone found Gaye's performance on-par with that of What's Going On and wrote that "he continues to transmit that same degree of intensity, sending out near cosmic overtones while eloquently phrasing the sometimes simplistic lyrics".

[12] Although he viewed that it "lacks that album's series of highpoints", Landau commented that "it ebbs and flows, occasionally threatening to spend itself on an insufficiency of ideas, but always retrieved, just in time, by Gaye's performance.

[12] In Creem magazine, Robert Christgau called the record "post-Al Green What's Going On, which means it's about fucking rather than the human condition, thank the wholly holey".

[29] In The Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time, Jimmy Guterman writes that the album was "a bit more conventional musically (soul crossing into mild funk) and much more focused lyrically than its predecessor, What's Going On".

[19] Chicago Tribune writer Greg Kot commended Gaye for using "the multi-tracked vocals perfected on 'What's Going On', this time to convey his most intimate desires", commenting that "while the album is replete with erotic imagery, both implied and explicit, it is also as much preoccupied with distance and unfulfilled need".

[24] Jason Ankeny of Allmusic called it "a record unparalleled in its sheer sensuality and carnal energy", writing that "Gaye's passions reach their boiling point [...] With each performance laced with innuendo, each lyric a come-on, and each rhythm throbbing with lust, perhaps no other record has ever achieved the kind of sheer erotic force of Let's Get It On".

"[8] BBC Music's Daryl Easlea found Gaye "in supreme command of his material", and viewed it as "much more than an album about simple lust", but an "iconic, rapturous work".

In contrast to Motown's previously successful process of emphasizing an artist's single releases rather than their album, Gaye and fellow producer Ed Townsend followed a similar formula previously used on What's Going On, in which the album's songs flow together in a suite-form arrangement,[40] opposing label CEO Berry Gordy's strong emphasis on hit single success.

[39] Gaye's change of musical style and production with the album made an immediate impact on the subsequently successful Motown artists, including Lionel Richie and Rick James.

"[19] The album's success helped spark a series of similarly styled releases by such smooth soul artists as Barry White (Can't Get Enough), Smokey Robinson (A Quiet Storm) and Earth, Wind & Fire (That's the Way of the World).

[10] The commercial success of such artists led to a change of trend from socially conscious aesthetics to more mainstream, sensually themed music.

[42] Gaye achieved further success with I Want You (1976), featuring more sexually explicit lyrics and expanded use of vocal multi-tracking, and with Here, My Dear (1978), which he based entirely on his tumultuous marriage to Anna Gordy.

Elliot [in his liner notes, that life amounts to "Birth, copulation and death"], and the young lady moaning [on the album], we hadn't heard that before.

[42]Following the success of Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On (1971) and James Brown's late 1960s and early 1970s singles, Gaye's Let's Get It On gave greater mainstream exposure to funk and broadened its influence on the music industry.

[10] On September 18, 2001, Let's Get It On was reissued by Motown as a two-disc deluxe edition release, featuring 24-bit digital remastering of the original album's recordings, previously unissued material and a 24-page booklet which contains the original LP liner notes by Marvin Gaye, as well as essays from Gaye biographers David Ritz and Ben Edmonds.