Yesterday when I visited our local music superstore with my best
\nfriend Prayer, I happened upon a CD in the import section made by
\n“The Braxtons”. “Pop quiz, Prayer … who does this remind you
\nof?”<\/p>\n
“Toni. When is the
\nshibal<\/i> Puff Daddy coming out?”<\/p>\n
Lo and behold, the threesome were her sisters (only the blindest
\nof the blind wouldn’t see the resemblence). It was way too
\nexpensive so I didn’t buy it, but I did notice that the cover and
\nback pic was surprisingly similar to Toni’s former day pics;
\ndripping with ambition. A family thing?<\/p>\n
Before the First Braxton released her establishing album
\nSecrets<\/i>, she had one of the most successful debut albums of
\nthat year and several “music experts” tagged her as a surefire
\nsuccess in the coming years. She also made popular a new kind of
\npop music; the Midtempo, a cross between R&B and rock
\nballads.<\/p>\n
The album
\nToni Braxton<\/i> is alive with these borderline acoustics except
\nfor one classic ballad called “Best Friend”. It gets tiring in
\n“Seven Whole Days”, “I Belong To You” and “How Many Ways” but the
\nrest of it is compensated by either good themes or good delivery.
\nMaterial-wise much of it is like reading
\nWaiting To Exhale<\/i> (well, at least I found myself juxtaposing
\nscenes) which is guarenteed to appeal to popular taste.<\/p>\n
Take away the aforementioned tiring tracks and you’re still left
\nwith nine good ones. I did flinch in the high notes of “Another Sad
\nLove Song” (pushing the throat; baaaaad), and didn’t think it was
\nanything special until Prayer pointed out that my attention always
\nwandered after the first verse. His meaning; her emoting gets good
\naround the end. “Breathe Again”, however, fully captured my
\nattention; breathless, smooth, and fully cohesive, it is her
\nsignature track hands-down. Elements of this song are used
\nthroughout the album.<\/p>\n
There are two heavier-background midtempo tracks “Spending My
\nTime With You” and “Love Should Have Brought You Home” which makes
\nher sing a little faster. It’s also shown later that she could pull
\noff uptempo (Soul Conventional remix of “Unbreak My Heart”) but
\nthese are an excellent preview; all the texture makes it sound like
\nhip-hop, but in a more cohesive level (sample-happy songs never did
\nimpress me too much).<\/p>\n
She shows the range of her voice in “You Mean The World To Me”
\nand “Best Friend”, and also shows diva potential in the latter,
\nwhich she co-wrote and co-produced. After a small interlude
\n(“reprise”) of “Breathe Again”, the album is over.<\/p>\n
Her distinct style is simply gone in her second album and maybe
\nthat’s a relief; it’s not a package that could work twice, and a
\nspin-off of “Breathe Again” might not have been successful. The
\nsound gets sexier, the texture mellow and sticky. Bigger names in
\nthe credits, lower notes in the score.<\/p>\n
But that’s another review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5795],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-35689","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-toni-braxton","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35689"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35689"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}