A gas station attendant in Annapolis heard something in Toni Braxton's voice that changed R&B. William Pettaway Jr. was working the pumps when he caught her singing, and he immediately offered to produce her. That chance encounter set the Maryland-born contralto on a path from church choirs to the top of the Billboard 200, but the road was never straight. Toni Braxton was born on October 7, 1967.
Church choirs and The Braxtons
Braxton grew up in Severn, Maryland, the eldest of six children in a strict religious household. Her father was a Methodist minister and power company worker; her mother had been an opera singer before becoming a cosmetologist and pastor. Singing in the church choir was her first stage, and by the late 1980s she was performing with her sisters in a group called The Braxtons. Their first single went nowhere, but it caught the ear of two producers who would change everything.
Antonio "L.A." Reid and Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds heard that failed single and saw a solo star. They invited Braxton to record a demo of a song written for Anita Baker, the reigning queen of quiet storm. Baker was pregnant and couldn't record it, so she suggested Braxton take the song instead. That demo became "Love Shoulda Brought You Home," and it landed on the soundtrack to the film Boomerang alongside a duet with Babyface.
LaFace debut and Grammy success
Reid and Edmonds signed Braxton to their label LaFace Records, and in the summer of 1993 she released her self-titled debut. The album shot to the top of the Billboard 200 and eventually sold more than ten million copies worldwide. It earned her three Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist, and made her velvet contralto one of the most recognizable sounds in R&B.
The real turning point came three years later with the ballad "Un-Break My Heart," written by Diane Warren. The song spent eleven weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and became the biggest hit of Braxton's career. It anchored her second album Secrets, which lingered in the charts for 92 weeks and went eight times platinum. Two more Grammys followed, one for pop and one for R&B.
The song spent eleven weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and became the biggest hit of Braxton's career.
Bankruptcy and auctioned awards
Then the money disappeared. In 1998 Braxton announced she was bankrupt, owing almost four million dollars. Her possessions, including her awards, were put up for auction to pay creditors. It was a stunning fall for an artist who had sold millions of records, and it forced her to rethink everything about how the music business worked.
Braxton kept working through the wreckage. She took a Broadway role as Belle in Beauty and the Beast, becoming the first African American woman to lead a Disney musical on that stage. A year later she settled her dispute with LaFace Records and signed a new contract worth twenty-five million dollars. The comeback was not a fairy tale, but it was real.
The story of Toni Braxton is not just about a voice, though that voice could break a heart and mend it in the same phrase. It is about what happens when the industry that made you also leaves you with nothing. She rebuilt from a gas station demo to a chart-topping dynasty, and when the dynasty crumbled, she walked onto a Broadway stage and started again.