Braxton, Toni

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Braxton, Toni

1968—

Singer

Toni Braxton's distinctive voice has made her an enduring figure in popular music since her big break. Braxton's first effort at recording solo picked up where a generation of R&B divas had left off years before—launching her into instant stardom in 1993. Showcasing a rich contralto much lauded by critics, the Maryland native's namesake debut solo album, Toni Braxton, won several industry awards and made her a household name almost overnight. One key to Braxton's success was the faith a famed producer team known for their hit-making abilities had placed in her talents. Her collaboration under the wings of Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and Antonio "L.A." Reid was a virtual assurance that her debut album, Toni Braxton, would go gold; it reached platinum instead. Critics deemed the singer the next Anita Baker or Whitney Houston, but Braxton, the daughter of a minister, dismissed the comparison. "I'm just a new singer who has been blessed to work with renowned producers," Braxton told Amy Linden in Essence in 1993 as her star began to rise. And rise it did; by 1996 Braxton had become the second female artist to win Grammy Awards for both Best R&B Vocal Performance and Best Pop Vocal Performance in the same year. Surviving a few career pitfalls, Braxton enjoyed continued success a decade later as she began to collect career achievements awards.

Sang from Young Age

Braxton was born on October 7, 1968, in Severn, Maryland, and grew up in a relatively prosperous household. Her father worked for a utility company, but was also a minister and deeply religious man; Braxton and her younger siblings—four sisters and a brother—belonged to several faiths during their childhood as the Braxton parents searched for a harmonious spiritual fit. For a long stretch of her childhood, the Braxton family belonged to the Apostolic Church, a strict creed that dictated the wearing of dresses for all female believers and forbid secular music. Braxton's mother, however, was an amateur opera singer and gave her daughters singing lessons that they put to use in their father's church choir. Braxton also studied piano and composed her own songs.

When Braxton entered her teen years, the family became adherents of the United Methodist Church, a less conservative faith, and her father rescinded some of the strict rules. She was finally allowed to buy her first pair of pants—some Levi's—in the eighth grade, and she could listen to non-religious music such as Chaka Khan and Stevie Wonder, two particular favorites. (She still had to sneak out of the house to watch Soul Train, though.) By the time she entered high school, Braxton had made up her mind that she wanted to become a singer—a decision, she has admitted, that was partly the result of attending predominantly white schools much of her life. "I always wanted to fit in, but they [classmates] never accepted me," Braxton told Joy Duckett Cain in Essence. "So I said, ‘One day, I'll show them.’"

While still a teen, Braxton talked her parents into letting her sing in a band, but one late-night performance caused her to come home past her curfew and she was forced to quit. After graduation from high school, Braxton enrolled in community college, then business school, and also worked as a secretary and court reporter. She decided on a back-up career as a music teacher, but had also formed a singing group with her sisters by the late 1980s. They entered talent contests and recorded one single, "The Good Life," as The Braxtons for Arista Records, she told Ebony writer Muriel L. Whetstone. The sales were so abysmal that she was certain no one outside the Braxton family had bought it.

Found Success as Solo Artist

Nevertheless, "The Good Life" got the attention of the famed Atlanta producers/label executives Edmonds and Reid. Braxton's voice lured them in particular, but they were wary of bringing another all-female group into the LaFace Records family since they had just signed TLC. (The Braxton sisters would later record their own album and serve as Braxton's back-up singers on the road.) Signing just Braxton in 1991, Edmonds—who performs under the name "Babyface"—recorded a duet with her, "Give U My Heart," for the soundtrack to the 1992 movie Boomerang; another Braxton single, "Love Shoulda Brought You Home," also appeared on the release. The latter—a heartfelt admonishment to a straying man—had originally been offered to Anita Baker, who passed on it. Each song enjoyed success on the charts while Braxton was at work co-writing and recording several new songs with Edmonds and Reid for a full-length debut album of her own.

The self-titled album, Toni Braxton, appeared in 1993, became an immediate hit, and would eventually sell over nine million copies. As Essence's Gordon Chambers explained, at the time of Braxton's debut, R&B and dance was dominated by "tough, sexed-up… adolescence bubble-gum pop," in dramatic contrast to the sound and sentiments that came out of Braxton. "Her bluesy, hard-hitting, timeless R&B ballads about lies, deceit, and love gone wrong hark back to Billie Holiday," Chambers said. Reviewing Toni Braxton for the Village Voice, James Hunter also found much to praise. "That Braxton doesn't try to stretch her voice up toward the sacred jazz galaxies or demonstrate wild concert virtuosity on this debut doesn't make her music seem more calculated or any less soulful," Hunter said. "It brings home the real."

Braxton's Grammy-winning record included several introspective, brooding cuts, such as "Another Sad Love Song"—which would win the 1993 Grammy for best female R&B vocal performance—and "Best Friend." The latter track she wrote about a real-life experience that occurred a few years before when her best friend immediately took up with a recently exited beau. Success was indeed the best revenge, and it was indeed sweet. "After I released [it], I heard through acquaintances that this ex-boyfriend wanted publishing rights," Braxton laughingly told Time writer Christopher John Farley.

"The things I sing about, women can identify with," Braxton explained to the magazine. "Although they're sad love songs, I always try to portray it like everything's going to be OK; I'm still strong." Furthermore, Braxton's lush voice limits her, in a way, from taking on the typical lightweight pop songs. In discussing the fact that her music seemed rather atypical of the offerings from other young, attractive African-American female recording artists—with their thumpy beats and lyrics that often celebrate sex—Braxton told Linden in Essence, "My voice is a lot older than I am. So, even though I might have enjoyed doing one of those hip-hop songs, I don't know if I could have, because of my mature sound."

At a Glance …

Born October 7, 1968, in Severn, MD; daughter of Michael (a utility company employee and minister) and Evelyn (a cosmetology instructor) Braxton. Married Keri Lewis (a musician), 2001; children: Denim Kole, Diezel Ky. Education: Attended community college, business school, and Bowie State University.

Career:

Secretary and court reporter; recording artist, 1991-.

Awards:

Two Grammy Awards, 1993, for Best New Artist and for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance; Grammy Award, 1994, for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance; Two Grammy Awards, 1996, for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance Best Female Pop Vocal Performance; Grammy Award, 2000, for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance; Aretha Franklin Soul Train Award, 2000, for career achievement; numerous Soul Train Music Awards and American Music Awards.

Addresses:

Web— www.tonibraxton.com.

Such smart-girl vibes in Braxton's music earned her legions of fans and made her a major star. With Secrets, released in the spring of 1996, Braxton took her time recording—"I can't record in the morning because I sound like Barry White," Braxton told Essence's Cain—and she and the LaFace team came up with a decidedly new, more upbeat sound. Farley found the transition a successful one. "The rhythms are forceful, dynamic, danceable," he wrote in Time. "These are the kinds of songs you can expect to hear booming out of car windows for the rest of the summer." The album, which met all expectations, featured a Grammy Award-winning number one single, "You're Making Me High," and earned a second Grammy for best pop female vocal performance for the much played "Unbreak My Heart." Braxton was the second female artist to win both of these Grammys in a single year. Additionally, the album won two American Music Awards for Braxton who also contributed a song to another hit soundtrack that year, Waiting to Exhale.

Career Sidetrack Opened Other Opportunities

Braxton's success was tainted by financial woes. She had signed a disadvantageous contract with LaFace Records that limited her royalties to about 35 cents per album sold, according to the Seattle Times. She was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1998. After a legal battle with LaFace Records, Braxton bounced back to continue her recording career with a new contract that put her on a firmer financial footing.

During the legal proceedings, Braxton took a respite from the recording studio to appear on Broadway in the lead role of Belle in Beauty and the Beast. "I always wanted to act," Braxton related to the Voice, "and if the bankruptcy thing hadn't happened, I wouldn't have started acting." Impressed with Braxton's performance on stage, New York Amsterdam contributor Vinette K. Pryce wrote that acting "may be her second calling."

The songstress returned at the start of the millennium with a new album, Heat, in 2000. The album, like her earlier work, was an instant success, earning two American Music Awards and the chanteuse a Grammy for best female R&B performance for "He Wasn't Man Enough."

Braxton married Keri Lewis, the keyboardist for the group Mint Condition, on April 21, 2001. The couple's first of two children was also born that year. Yet her growing family did not distract Braxton from her career. Braxton appeared in her first feature film, Kingdom Come, a comedy with Whoopi Goldberg, in 2001. Her performance won her a BET Black Oscar. Braxton also kept recording, collaborating with her husband on the production of her first Christmas album. Snowflakes, released in 2001, enjoyed critical praise and popular appeal. In his review of Snowflakes for the Afro-American Red Star, Wayman Coleman complimented Braxton's renditions of Christmas classics as well as the original tracks on the album. He called her "a voice of the present and a voice of the future." Braxton released another new album, More than a Woman, in 2002.

Not long after the birth of her second child, Braxton returned to Broadway to star in Aida in 2003. Elton John, who wrote the music for the production, predicted to the New York Beacon that Braxton would be "amazing" as Aida, adding ""Toni Braxton has one of the best voices anywhere. It's a voice I've fallen in love with ever since her first album." Her performance delighted audiences, but was cut short by a heart ailment that interrupted her schedule for nearly three years.

Fully recovered in 2005, Braxton resumed her career full force. She released a new album, Libra, in 2005, and launched her first tour in ten years. The Trumpet Awards Foundation praised the album as "a glowing testament to Toni Braxton's status as one of the decade's most vibrant, exciting, young artists." Braxton's status as an international superstar was confirmed further when she performed the official song of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, "The Time of Our Lives," with Il Divo. She then became a headliner at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Not yet 40 years old, Braxton had enough winning material to release The Essential Toni Braxton, a two CD commemorative album of her recording career at Artista and LaFace. Her career success was honored with a Trumpet Award in 2007. Trumpet Awards Foundation founder and chairperson, Xernona Clayton, praised Braxton for her tenacity, saying, according to the New York Beacon: "In spite of the odds, the pitfalls and her dark days, Toni Braxton not only survived but was also able to overcome the adversities. Her story is one to share and one that will surely inspire others." Braxton herself seemed newly inspired and headed toward an even longer future in the music industry.