Bracing for Braxton live
TOUCHDOWN: AS LONG AS I LIVE WORLD TOUR ON IN SA
Toni Braxton is highest-selling female R&B artist.
Having sold over 41 million albums and 67 million records worldwide to date, she is ranked as one of the highest-selling female R&B artists in history – and she’s performing in Johannesburg tonight.
We’re talking about American singer-songwriter, record producer, pianist, actress and television personality Toni Michelle Braxton.
While very few people are unfamiliar with her still evergreen ’90s hits: Another Sad Love Song, Breathe Again, Seven Whole Days, You Mean The World To Me and Love Shoulda Brought You Home, not many of us are familiar with her personal journey.
In the lead-up to her As Long as I Live 2019 SA Tour, which kicks off at the TicketPro Dome in Johannesburg tonight, The Citizen thought it fitting to trace the life of this hit-maker.
Born in 1967 in the small and somewhat conservative town of Severn, Maryland, to parents Evelyn and Michael, a Baptist minister, Braxton and her four younger sisters were restricted from engaging in any form of popular culture.
However, having a natural gift for singing, Braxton and her sisters (Traci, Towanda, Trina and Tamar) were enrolled into the choir at their father’s church.
Recognising their daughters’ golden voices, Michael and Evelyn eventually relaxed their strict rules and allowed the girls limited exposure to Motown singing legends such as Chaka Khan and Stevie Wonder.
This easing up of parenting rules resulted in music becoming a central component of Braxton’s life. In addition to participating in a number of amateur singing contests she aspired to becoming a music teacher after college.
Then one day, while singing to herself at a filling station, her distinctive contralto voice caught the ear of Bill Pettaway, one of the most popular songwriters at the time.
Taken by Braxton’s “husky, sultry, elegant and sexy” voice, Pettaway set about helping the young songbird land a recording deal with Arista Records for her and her sisters who went on to become known as The Braxtons.
Although their 1990 single The Good Life was not a smash hit, it snagged the attention of producers Antonio L.A. Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, who signed Braxton up on a new deal.
Two years later, under Edmond’s and Reid’s LaFace record label, Braxton performed her single, Love Shoulda Brought You Home, for the soundtrack to the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang, which got massive exposure and led to the release of her hugely successful eponymous debut album, Toni Braxton.
Four years later, in 1996, the artist released Secrets, her second studio album which included Un-Break My Heart and the monster club hit You Make Me High, and which saw her snag two trophies at the 1997 Grammy Awards for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and
Best Female R&B
Pop Vocal Performance.
Her career was on the up and up with another huge album, The Heat, released three years later and going on to make history as the first black actress to play Belle in a Broadway production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
In spite of record deal legal battles, filing for bankruptcy and being diagnosed with lupus (an excruciating autoimmune disease), Braxton continued to roll out successful albums and cement her place in the annals of R&B history as the highest-selling female artist in the genre.
Earlier, on The Steve Harvey Show, Braxton opened up about a few of her concert dates being shifted around due to her lupus flare up.
“I had pleurisy, I had little flares … that’s inflammation of my lungs and, as a singer, you need the lungs.
“But I got through it and everyone was great and gracious.” Tenacious as ever, Braxton is set to woo her South African fans tonight in an unmissable concert.