Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir (15 page)

R
ight after I finished my first album, I got my sisters a record deal at LaFace—but they never released any music on the label. That’s because the A&R manager who signed them—Bryant, L.A.’s brother—left for a job at Atlantic. Bryant asked Kenny if he could take my sisters with him. Kenny agreed.

In the interim, Trina and Traci got pregnant. Because Traci’s pregnancy came after the Atlantic deal was signed, she wasn’t allowed to stay in the group (record label execs will often call off a deal if a female artist becomes pregnant—no, it’s not fair, but that’s just the way it is). Towanda, Trina, and Tamar continued with their deal and later released the album
So Many Ways
as the Braxtons. It earned a couple golds abroad, but it didn’t do so well here in the United States. I thought the album’s producers tried to make my sisters sound like me, even though they were all younger. Even still, we were all hoping that the record would be a big hit, and I think my sisters were disappointed that it didn’t blow up overnight the way mine did. I understand that disappointment, but here’s the part that confounds me: I’ve often been blamed for it. Over the years, I’ve heard a certain complaint repeated from a couple of my sisters: “We helped you in your career—now why can’t you help us?”

I’ve always acknowledged this: Performing as one of the Braxtons is what led to my deal with L.A. and Kenny. So when it came to helping my sisters get their own deals, I did a lot of legwork for them—and yet they’ve still said I’m not doing enough. I’ve finally come to a conclusion: As much as I love my family, I am only responsible for myself and my children. Period. But during my early days in the music business, I wasn’t yet strong enough to stand in that truth.

With the success of my first album, L.A. and Kenny put a lot of thought into how they should market me for my second album and beyond. I felt like a bottle of ketchup—a product that had to be branded and sold. “She’s so young,” L.A. once said to Kenny, “and yet her voice is so mature.” Sometimes they would have entire conversations about me as if I wasn’t there. On one particular day in 1993, Daryl Simmons, a producer and a silent partner on a lot of my songs, had dropped by Atlanta’s Doppler Studios to meet us.

“Maybe we should call her Toni Michele,” said Kenny. “Or maybe she should just be Toni. That sounds young.”

“But we don’t want to make the mistake that people made with Johnny Gill,” L.A. responded. “He was like a child with this big, giant voice. Maybe we should make her older so she can appeal to an older demographic.”

Daryl finally piped up: “I like the name Toni Braxton. It’s so distinct. Don’t change her name.” They paused, and I studied each of their faces.

“Well,” L.A. finally said, “the name Toni Braxton will probably sell five hundred thousand more units. Let’s stick with that.” I didn’t say a word. I think a lot of my success came from knowing when to shut the hell up.

L.A. and Kenny eventually concluded that I should be younger and sexier on the second album. I loved the music of other artists in my age group, like Mary J. Blige, and I wanted to sing the kind of dance hits that would involve stage choreography. Yet L.A. and Kenny wanted to put me at the piano on the stage, like Carole King. “She should just be a diva behind a mic,” Clive protested. That’s why they decided to save the whole piano thing for a future album—and I did eventually do one of those morning shows where they had me play and sing a song I wrote called “Best Friend.” But even when I played, many people thought I was faking it. I wasn’t. Though I signed on to LaFace as a singer-songwriter, I always had Kenny.

When it came to songwriting, I was no Kenny (at least not yet!)—but he did encourage me. “You should get in the studio and write some songs,” he’d tell me. “Maybe you could be part of a duo, like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.” He tried pairing me with this singer named Debra Killings, who played the bass and did a lot of background vocals for TLC. “You two could be like A Taste of Honey with ‘Boogie Oogie Oogie,’” said Kenny. “You play the piano and Debra plays the bass.” It was a good idea—but the energy never quite came together on that collaboration because I got caught up in other work.

Once a first album has been a hit, some artists feel an enormous pressure to produce a second album that’s just as good or better. I didn’t feel that way at all. In fact, my first record’s success gave me a real surge of confidence. I couldn’t wait to get into the studio. The creative process is hard work, yes, but it’s also completely fulfilling when you finally come up with just the right lyrics or melody. That happened rather organically for the song called “You’re Makin’ Me High”—and as it turns out,
very
high.

First things first: I’d never taken a puff of anything. By now, I’m sure you’ve figured out that I was a late bloomer—so at twenty-six, I began working overtime to get out of the “church girl” box and really explore life. But one evening when someone gave me a blunt, I thought I’d try it. First of all, I was paranoid to even have it in my possession. “It’s such a small amount that you won’t go to jail for it,” said the person who handed it to me. But I was still nervous—so I tucked it away in a shoebox in my bedroom. A couple nights later, I finally pulled it out, lit it, inhaled, and smoked the whole thing in one sitting.

I loved it—at least the first few times I smoked. I would watch the Chinese channel and think I actually understood what the actors were saying! But after smoking four or five Mary Janes over the following couple of months, I started to feel strange. Maybe marijuana relaxes some people, but it gave me a weird kind of déjà vu—I felt like I was reliving my entire life, scene by scene. It also made me giggle. A lot. Once that laughing was finished, I felt dizzy. And finally, my lightheadedness was followed by a horrible case of the munchies. Then one night while I was smoking, I had the most terrible panic attack I’d ever experienced. I decided it was time to stop—and I’ve never touched any drug since. When I admitted to Kenny that I’d experimented with marijuana, he just chuckled. “Who’d you try it with?” he said. I smiled but didn’t answer. A couple weeks later in the studio, Kenny and I were working on a track by Bryce Wilson (Bryce gave the track to me, and I loved it so much that I let L.A. and Kenny hear it). That day, Kenny and I reworked the lyrics and came up with a song—“You’re Makin’ Me High.” That’s the one good thing that came out of my pot phase.

I CONTINUED TO
hang out with Bryant from time to time. I’m sure he thought we were in a relationship, but I didn’t see us as that serious. At one point, we would get together a couple times a month, but then I’d back away and we’d stop seeing each other for weeks at a time. I kept trying to tell him that it was over—but he wouldn’t let it be over. I never wanted to see him again in private. But I did anyway—mostly because he was so involved with my sisters. The whole time my sisters were working with Bryant at Atlantic, I never told them about the nature of our relationship or how unhappy I was.