Celebrates 25 Years In Music
By Martha Tang
Multi-platinum, seven-time Grammy Award®-winning superstar and icon Toni Braxton released SEX & CIGARETTES last month via Def Jam Recordings. SEX & CIGARETTES – the ninth album in Toni’s legendary career – is her first studio album since 2014’s Grammy-winning collaboration with Babyface, Love, Marriage & Divorce and her first solo album in almost a decade. The album was co-produced by Toni herself and includes the single “Deadwood,” (released September 2017), which recently topped the charts at Urban AC radio. Her brand new single “Long As I Live” is out now, and is one of several tracks Toni co-wrote and produced for the album. The album also includes a duet with Colbie Caillat (on “My Heart”).
This year commemorates 25 years in the music business for Toni Braxton, since the release of her eponymously titled 8x-platinum debut album in 1993, on Arista Records. The album included her career-defining worldwide hits “Another Sad Love Song” and “Breathe Again,” which made Grammy® history by winning consecutive awards in 1994 and 1995 respectively, for Best Female R&B Performance. The album also generated Toni’s 1994 Grammy® as Best New Artist.
SEX & CIGARETTES marks Toni’s first major release since Love, Marriage & Divorce, her Grammy®-winning Best R&B Album collaboration with Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, released February 2014. A critically acclaimed landmark project for both artists, Love, the New York Times hailed Marriage & Divorce as a “quiet-storm oasis” in People magazine’s 3-star review, and “a re-animator”. SEX & CIGARETTES is available now https://ToniBraxton.lnk.to/SexandCigarettes
In March 2014, Toni Braxton became the latest Grammy Award®-winning artist to join the cast of the Broadway musical After Midnight as “Special Guest Star” vocalist (with Babyface), for a limited engagement run at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. After Midnight reintroduced the Cotton Club’s exciting tradition of welcoming contemporary artists in limited engagements throughout the musical’s 272-performance run.
About Toni Braxton:
The distinctive, sultry vocals of seven-time Grammy Award®-winning recording artist Toni Braxton, singer, songwriter, record producer, and philanthropist, have been celebrated internationally ever since she was first introduced to the world by Babyface and L.A. Reid in 1992. Her self-titled debut album released the next year was a 10 million-selling phenomenon that generated Toni’s first Grammys® in 1994, for Best New Artist and Best Female R&B Vocal (“Another Sad Love Song”). The album’s longevity led Toni to win her second Best Female R&B Vocal Grammy® the following year (for “Breathe Again”). Her second album, Secrets arrived in ’96, and history repeated itself with 15 million worldwide sales. At the Grammy Awards® in 1997, Toni became only the second woman in history (beside Dionne Warwick) to win Best Female Pop Vocal (“Un-break My Heart”) and Best Female R&B Vocal (“You’re Makin’ Me High”) in the same year. She returned to the Grammy® podium in 2001, to claim another Best Female R&B Vocal award (“He Wasn’t Man Enough,” from the double-platinum album The Heat). Toni’s seventh Grammy® came in 2015, when she and Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds shared the Best R&B Album award for their collaboration, Love, Marriage & Divorce.
Into the millennium, Toni blossomed into an acting career with Broadway musical roles in Beauty and the Beast (the first African American woman to play a leading role in a Disney Broadway production) and Aida, and a dramatic turn in the Lifetime movie Twist of Faith. Her heartfelt memoir Unbreak My Heart was published in May 2014 by HarperCollins.
Raising her two sons Denim and Diezel, Toni balances her career demands with the high priorities of family, heath, public service, and charity work, particularly on behalf of the two diseases that have impacted her family directly: She is living with Lupus and her youngest child is living with Autism. Early detection and intervention has helped both Braxtons to be role models on how to live normal lives with these conditions. Toni is also a proud spokesperson for Autism Speaks and Lupus L.A.
Connect with Toni Braxton on Facebook, Instagram, Twittter or her website www.tonibraxton.com
