Toni Braxton and Babyface New Album

By Karu F. Daniels | Photography by Marc Baptiste

Icons Toni Braxton and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds are in the midst of the reunion project,Love Marriage & Divorce, that’s inspired by their own publicly rocky former relationships. But while it’s fodder for new music, the past has no place in this duo’s future. It is all about what’s next. And from what we’ve found out, there’s plenty ahead.

“One of the reasons why I became the success I am today is because of Babyface,” says Toni Braxton during a break in filming her clan’s wildly popular WE TV reality show Braxton Family Values. “He said [to L.A. Reid,] ‘She’s Babyface meets Anita Baker, we should sign her.’ And that’s how it started.”

Continuing her trip down her personal A Star Is Born memory lane, the sassy songstress says, “He saw the vision at ‘Hello.’ He’s the one who said, ‘Let’s put her on the Boomerang ‘soundtrack’. So he introduced me to the world!”

Those were the good ole days. If the 1960s and 1970s represent the golden era of black music, then the early 1990s is arguably its platinum one—as an explosion of crossover hits served up in a myriad of fashions from the likes of newcomers En Vogue, Jodeci and Mariah Carey and established artists like Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson soared up Billboard’s charts. Even teen rap duo Kriss Kross became musical tapestry for Generation Xers of all walks. And the Boomerang soundtrack, which gave Boyz II Men their biggest career hit with “End of the Road,” landed right in the middle of this activity in June 1992. The opus, released by LaFace Records—an upstart Atlanta-based subsidiary of Arista Records founded by hitmaking producers Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Edmonds in 1989—also boasted tracks from A Tribe Called Quest, Johnny Gill, Grace Jones, P.M. Dawn and, yes, an R&B ingenue named Toni Braxton.

Babyface, or “Face,” as he is affectionately known, was already a bona fide recording star (as the “Whip Appeal”-singing solo crooner, and with the R&B group The Deele, who gave us “Shoot ’Em Up Movies” and the Quiet Storm staple “Two Occasions”) and an in-demand music producer for Whitney Houston, Pebbles and Bobby Brown, among others, by the time Boomerang was released. So naturally he recorded for and produced the hit film’s soundtrack.

“Give U My Heart,” his duet with Braxton, was the first single. It hit the Top 30 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles chart, peaking at No. 2 on the R&B chart. The soundtrack itself reached No. 4 on Billboard’s 200 and topped the R&B/ Hip-Hop Albums chart. Braxton’s solo hit on the soundtrack, “Love Shoulda Brought You Home,” inspired by a line in the film, propelled her self-titled solo debut album, released July 13, 1993, and served as her official entry into the pop music pantheon.

Today is not then, however. Twenty years later, Braxton has endured many ups and downs, all while in the limelight. From messy financial and legal woes, including well-publicized bankruptcies, and a marriage and divorce to Mint Condition drummer/keyboardist Keri Lewis to very public health challenges (recently with her own lupus and her son Diezel’s autism), amid the insanity of the music industry, all while delivering a noteworthy body of work and maintaining a loyal fan base.

After conquering the worlds of R&B/Pop and Dance charts with her 1996 global No. 1 megahit “Un-Break My Heart,” Braxton didn’t rest on her laurels. A much-heralded 1998 Broadway debut in Disney’s Beauty & the Beast exposed her versatility, while opening her up to new audiences—and so did her brief Las Vegas residency at the Flamingo hotel (which she ended early due to health problems). Proving that anything is worth a try, Braxton even took to the big screen in the 2001 dramedy Kingdom Come, alongside Whoopi Goldberg, LL Cool J and Jada Pinkett Smith.

Life hasn’t been a cakewalk for Babyface either. While he has remained active behind the scenes, producing a Music Hall of Fame worth of artists, even now, with the success of new pop sensation Ariana Grande’s debut album, Yours Truly, on which he wrote and produced several songs, including her hit Top 40 single “Baby I,” his solo career has waned in recent years. Plus, his personal life has also had its ups and downs. His 1992 marriage to Tracey Edmonds, with whom he produced several movies in various capacities, including Soul Food and Hav Plenty, and fathered two sons, came to an end in 2005. He also endured a reportedly bitter falling out with Reid (a former X-Factor judge and now the head of Epic Records) that resulted in the dissolution of LaFace, which, in addition to Braxton, enjoyed multiplatinum success with Usher, TLC, OutKast and Pink. Today, he has found love once again with his fiancée Nicole “Nikki” Pantenburg, a former dancer (Janet Jackson) with whom he welcomed daughter Peyton in 2008. Their 2014 nuptials will be his third.

These ups and downs worked as inspiration for Braxton and Babyface reuniting. They have joined forces for three high-profile collaborations: the duets album Love Marriage & Divorce, which has already produced the Top 5 Urban Contemporary hit “Hurt You,” arriving February 4; a stint in March with the Broadway musical After Midnight, which features music crafted by Wynton Marsalis celebrating Harlem’s zenith during the 1920s and 1930s when its legendary nightclubs ruled Manhattan nightlife, in roles Fantasia and Dulé Hill originated; and, finally, a national tour.

These developments are especially impressive in light of Braxton’s widely reported decision toquit the music business. “I was in a small place in my life and I was going to retire,” Braxton explains. “It’s not even a question. I said, ‘I’m tired of fighting.’ I was feeling sorry for myself. I was depressed over where my career was going. I was also down with my health,” she continues. “I found out that I developed blood clots and I couldn’t get a grip on this lupus. I didn’t know what was going on with me. I was just in a very uncomfortable place in my life and where I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy to be.

Startlingly, she shares: “[I was] not suicidal, but it was a close relative. I’ve got my kids to live for, but I was in a hopeless stage in my life.” Good music industry comrades like Michael McDonald, Fantasia and Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott helped calm her down. “It’s like when you’re going through things and you think you’re the only one. They told me, ‘We’ve all felt that, and we’ve been there but it’s not time.’ It helped me a bit. But Babyface was the most influential of all those people in getting me back to it,” she reveals.

“Toni was kind of just talking about giving up, just not really wanting to record anymore—she was not just having fun at it anymore,” Face shares. “I didn’t think that was a very good idea. I talked her into changing her mind.”

“You know, you can get frustrated with the music industry, but I never get frustrated with the music.” he says. “The music is what drives us to begin with. So I don’t think I ever lost sight of that.”

Besides Love Marriage & Divorce seems like a no-brainer: a concept project featuring two of the biggest talents in the industry, who also share a unique musical relationship. It’s not husband and wife (Ashford and Simpson), not father and daughter (Natalie and Nat King Cole) or brother and sister (BeBe and CeCe Winans). The real question is: What the hell took them so long?

“It wasn’t anything particular,” says Face, a 10-time Grammy winner. “I guess we never really thought about it before. You know you just go through life and you do what you do and you live.”

Still, their partnership wasn’t easy. “Working with Toni was a little bit different than working with her years ago, because now, we’re dealing with a grown-up Toni who certainly has her own opinion in how she thinks things should be. So we went through a lot of compromises putting this record together,” he reveals.

“We were kind of on and off,” he adds. “We started off good, then we slowed down for a bit and just tried to find the things that made sense. We battled on certain songs.”

Despite her well-known reputation for being otherwise, Braxton says there was nothing diva-ish in her actions. “When I first met Babyface, I was this wide-eyed artist, I was green and I was just happy to be there. I had the mindset of, ‘Mold me, make me, what do you think I should be?’” she recalls.

“But, now, I’m an artist like he is: established. I have my own opinions. I know how I want my music to be, so I had to remind him: ‘Kenny, I’m your baby sister, but I have breasts and I have boyfriends. You have to accept that I’m grown up now.’ That was the one big adjustment for him. It was nothing negative, nothing negative at all.”

And Babyface, who has worked with the likes of Aretha, Whitney and Mariah, being the diva whisperer he is, well, adjusted to her demands. “Most of the album I did in Toni’s key,” he admits. “So I did more compromising in terms of trying to figure out the keys, trying to figure out how to sing. Our voices are pretty different from one another in terms of keys, but it ended up working out really well. My main thing was for Toni to shine like she should.”

Success in this day and age, especially from veteran artists, is hard to come by. “While I think there is an audience for their work, especially the crowd that grew up on their sound and is now older and more mature—let’s call it the Essence Music Festival demographic—it might be challenging for them to reach newer and younger audiences, if that is even their aim,” says Dr. Jason King, associate professor at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. “The perceived value of R&B and soul music has changed drastically, and it’s also increasingly a game for teens and tweens more than it is an adult contemporary market.”

Braxton shares that she was far more worried about today’s music rat race than Babyface. “He told me, ‘Toni, you have to stop thinking about selling records. Don’t look at it that way, just have fun.’” Face says, “Ultimately my position was to just make it feel good… We weren’t about chasing the trends of whatever is happening now.” After all the trends aren’t what made Toni Braxton and Babyface. Trends don’t build legends.

Playing it safe doesn’t either. And that’s where Broadway comes in. After Midnight marks Braxton’s Broadway return and Babyface’s Broadway debut. “That wasn’t necessarily in my planning,” says Face, who is among the newest Hollywood Walk of Fame honorees. “It’s something that I’ve been approached with a number of times. I’ve always been a lover of Broadway musicals and just Broadway in general. I’ve always come to New York and have gone to plays. That’s one of the things I love to do. I like to bring my kids to New York to see Broadway shows, so it’s not strange to me in that sense. The only thing that’s unique in this case is me actually being on a Broadway stage,” he says.

“I’m a student of everything, but I’m particularly drawn to music from that Cotton Club era. It is something that, of course, I’m not used to” Face continues, “but it’s something that I’m certainly excited about trying to take my go at, so to say. I think the fact that Toni and I are doing it together is smart. She has done Broadway, so it’s kind of old hat for her at this point.”

One of the show’s producers, Carol Fineman, agrees: “We can’t wait to hear Toni wrap her silky, sexy voice around these timeless songs. She’s already proven she has the chops for Broadway, and now we expect real fireworks when we team her vocal prowess and style with both Babyface and the hottest big band Broadway’s ever heard.”

Whether it’s Broadway or a duets album, Babyface says Braxton is the deciding factor. “For me, the songs are what they are. And there are really some great songs there,” he says of their album,Love Marriage & Divorce. “I’m really excited about Toni and hearing her voice,” he gushes. “I realized how much I missed Toni Braxton. It’s so nice to hear her again.”