![]() I pray your new baby is a boy – please don't have a girl, 'cause you'll give that woman the world". Braxton is so proud of it she recites its lyrics: "I hope she gives you a disease … but not enough to make you die, only make you cry. One of those fights concerned the album's most arresting track, I Wish. "We had to fight to get through to the compromise. You created this.'" Babyface sighs again. Well, you helped me get in the business and I became Toni Braxton. I told him: 'Kenny, when you first came in the business, someone helped you and you became Babyface. I still want to sing no, but I come with my own ideas. I had no opinions and no say – I just wanted to sing. "And it certainly gave her strong opinions."īraxton explains: "When I first came to Kenny, I was a brand new artist. Babyface praises the strength Braxton has displayed to survive life's vicissitudes, before sighing wryly. She now describes her former mentor as her "musical husband" – though in the context of this album, marriage isn't exactly a smooth path. "My voice is a thick chocolate milkshake, and Kenny's the straw that comes in and helps you drink it a lil bit," declares Braxton. The pair also blend so well vocally that it's hard to believe how few times they've sung on record together until now. Reading on mobile? Click to view Hurt You video It's like coming home, smelling and tasting – hearing Toni was exactly that." TONI BRAXTON BABYFACE SONGS TV"And not just going home, but if you've been away from your hometown for a while and you open the door and your mom is cooking one of your favourite dishes – whether it's chilli or soul food or rice and peas, which always used to be my favourite – and your dad's on the couch watching your favourite TV show. "From the moment she sang, it was kind of like going home," muses Babyface – who is enjoying something of a renaissance himself, having produced much of last year's best pop-R&B album, Ariana Grande's effervescent Yours Truly. ![]() It sounds more 90s than any amount of current 90s revivalism, but less due to nostalgia than a "rebirth" after years of trying to chase trends for Braxton. The result is Love, Marriage & Divorce, a multifaceted look at the arc of a relationship (the emphasis, unsurprisingly, is on the D of the title) that's by turns wry, confused, lustful and vindictive. For 20 years, the two had occasionally mooted the idea of a collaborative album, but there had never been a pressing reason to make it. Braxton, still reeling from self-doubt, felt she wasn't ready to make a solo album. The scars from her recent divorce were still fresh Edmonds's own marriage had ended after 13 years in 2005. Why have you stopped playing the piano on your albums? Stop thinking like a record company – I need you to remember that you're an artist.'"Īfter years of being told she was dated, that "the old Toni Braxton way is played out", she had to be coaxed back into the studio at all, let alone to write songs: "At first, I was just venting, not making music." But eventually, a new project began to take shape. "He said: 'You've stopped believing in yourself. "He helped me work on getting my mojo back," she explains. In the wake of that spontaneous decision, friends rallied round to change her mind – among them Kenneth " Babyface" Edmonds, the R&B pioneer from under whose wing she emerged in 1992. Just a year on, though, Braxton is making the kind of easily assured comeback that's eluded her for so long. ![]() Last February, with her 12-year marriage in the process of collapsing, she found herself at her lowest ebb, and announced her retirement from the music industry with immediate effect: "I felt like I had nothing left to offer myself, let alone any fans or listeners." Over the past decade, Braxton has been known more for sundry travails – legal disputes with no fewer than three record labels, multiple bankruptcies, health issues, personal turbulence – than her songs. It's also a disposition that's been hard-won – or rather, hard-regained. There's nothing off-putting about this – she is funny and self-aware rather than obliviously entitled, and gracious to a fault – but her way with a metaphor and habit of slipping into the third person when talking about herself is a reminder that Braxton is an R&B diva of two decades' standing who came of age during the 90s, when aloof hauteur was more valued than approachability. ![]() "You may have to change a few accessories here and there, but that's OK." "I'm like that classic black dress that never goes out of style," she pronounces in lofty tones. D espite the crackly transatlantic phone line, Toni Braxton's regal disposition comes through loud and clear.
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