With an impressive catalog of five albums (alongside 2003’s best-selling “Ultimate Collection”), Toni Braxton has built a worldwide base of music lovers since she first burst onto the contemporary music scene in 1991 with “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” (from the soundtrack of the hit movie “Boomerang”). As the “First Lady Of LaFace Records,” Toni’s creative partnership with Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds yielded a non-stop run of multi-platinum albums: 1993’s “Toni Braxton,” 1996’s “Secrets,” the 2000 set “The Heat,” 2001’s “Snowflakes” holiday album, and 2003’s highly personal and thought-provoking “More than a Woman,” which featured a number of songs written by Toni herself as well as production from the Neptunes and Rodney Jerkins, among others. With natural musical skills that were immediately evident when she started singing in church with her four sisters in Severn, Maryland, and inspired by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, and Whitney Houston, Toni had set her sights on a singing career from her earliest days. It was while studying to become a teacher at Bowie State University that she came to the attention of LaFace owners L.A. Reid and Babyface. Her decade with LaFace was filled with both accomplishment and challenge; while she constantly achieved chart success globally, racking up some 40 million worldwide sales through her five LaFace albums, Toni dealt with a much-publicized bankruptcy in 1997, which she recalled was “a major learning opportunity for me.” Resolved in 1998, Toni began her first Broadway run that year with a starring role in “Beauty & the Beast.” The 2000 success of “The Heat,” her third album, was typified by Top-10 status in over a dozen countries, including the U.S., France, Germany, Holland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Hong Kong, South Africa, Greece, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Israel, and Switzerland. The album’s gold single “He Wasn’t Man Enough” earned Toni a 2000 Grammy Award for “Best Female R&B Vocal Performance,” while the album won two American Music Awards.
My Soul, set for release on June 1, 2010, marks Leela James’ debut on Stax Records, a division of Concord Music Group. The move to Stax – the legendary home of some of the greatest soul and R&B artists of the past half-century – is a fitting destination for a vocalist who has committed herself [...]
As the title of this entry suggests, there’s good and bad news when it comes to Faith Evans‘ impending return to the scene. On the one hand, we have finally gotten confirmation that Faith is coming back with new music this year. That’s right, the other First Lady has been busy recording new music and [...]
Very few events occur with less frequency that cause normally self-composed people, especially men, to react with as erratically as when a new Sade album is released. It’s as though Sade’s imminent return marks a celestial event on a mystical calendar that none of us have easy access to. Never have tracks’ listings and order [...]
There are singers. And then there is Ledisi. The woman is a vocal dynamo, impressing with each note that escapes her mouth. In today’s sea of model chicks parading as vocalists, Ledisi is stick-to-your-ribs Sunday dinner at grandma’s house to their fast food. After years of setbacks and discouragement, her last two albums have put [...]
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