by Toni Braxton
“I promise you that a year from now, you’ll be excited but you won’t show it,” he said with a grin. “You’re going to have so many great experiences.” We finally pulled up to the gate of his community and a guard let us in. As we talked, I stared out the window to see row after row of enormous homes with immaculately manicured lawns in his country club. We pulled into his driveway.
When I walked through his front door, my jaw hit the ground. The place must’ve been ten thousand square feet! Stunning oversized artwork lined the walls. A taupe Kreiss sofa sat in the living room. Long, sheer, Mediterranean-style curtains flowed down from their rods and swayed as the breeze blew in. Even the floors were special—pickled hardwood in an off-white color. In college, I had once dated a guy whose place was decorated in a similar way—God only knows where he got the money. I’m grateful that I’d at least had that much exposure, because otherwise, I probably would’ve lost my mind the first time I saw L.A.’s living room. “Come on in,” he told me. “Make yourself at home.”
He first took me into the hair salon—yes, he had one of those in his house, too. L.A. was then married to Pebbles, and she owned the production label Pebbitone. Pebbles, whose own 1987 solo album went platinum, had discovered the R&B group TLC; L.A. and Kenny eventually signed them on to LaFace. When we rounded the corner into the salon, I met Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes from TLC—they weren’t yet famous at the time, but they would be later. Debra Jean “Deah Dame” Hurd (of the group Damian Dame, the first act signed to LaFace) and Marie Davis, a hairstylist with Pebbitone, were both there. So was Pebbles. “Nice to meet you!” said Pebbles. I could hardly believe I was standing in the same room with all these famous people—or that I might be on my way to becoming one of them. Unbelievable.
I was in awe of Pebbles. I’d seen beauty like hers on television, but never in person. She was so well manicured and stylish, and she had the most amazing thick hair. As I stood there in my jeans and ugly sweatshirt and clutched my knockoff handbag, I suddenly felt out of place. After a couple minutes of chatting, L.A. and I left the room. As we exited, I heard Pebbles say, “She’s country—but she’s a cute girl.”
L.A. called his recording studio, which was in his guesthouse, LaCoco. We didn’t do much in the studio that first day. L.A. just played a couple demo tracks he’d been working on for Anita Baker; L.A. and Kenny were in final negotiations with Paramount to produce the soundtrack for the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang. So they wanted to have a few songs ready in case the deal came through. The real recording began a couple days later when I met with Kenny. The plan was for me to record the demo of two songs that Kenny was writing for Anita. Anita would eventually listen to that demo to get a feel for the songs.
L.A. represented the business side of LaFace—and Kenny was the creative force. That’s probably why I was so starstruck the first day we worked together. Back when I heard Kenny’s 1986 record Lovers, I went crazy over his voice. I even started trying to yodel the way he did! I thought of myself as the female version of Kenny. I’d often tell my brother, Mikey, “He is going to produce my albums one day”—and here I was, about to live that fantasy.
When I arrived at L.A.’s studio for the second time, Bo Watson (the Midnight Star keyboardist who’d coached me in Dayton) was there. L.A. introduced me to the team in the studio—and I thought the sound engineer looked like John Oates, that curly-haired musician in Hall & Oates. Kenny walked in and greeted me. “Wow, you cut your hair!” he said. “I like it.” I blushed a little.
Kenny had been working on the lyrics for the duet “Give U My Heart.” Bo began playing the melody and Kenny sang along. After a couple verses, he asked me to join in. A few minutes into our duet, the vocal booth began having some technical difficulties and then it actually broke down. “Let’s record it in the bathroom,” said Kenny. “The acoustics are great in there.” So we stepped into the small space, which was all black with granite walls; a shimmering crystal chandelier hung from above. Over the next hour, we recorded the entire song in there.
In the following days, Kenny and I worked on additional tracks for Anita Baker—“You Mean the World to Me” and “Another Sad Love Song,” which was the most beautiful melody I’d ever heard. I sang the demo for both of the songs, though we didn’t actually finish “You Mean the World to Me.” I was the best artist Kenny and L.A. could’ve chosen at that time in their careers, because I could be so easily molded. If they told me what to sing, I sang it. I was excited just to be recording a demo for a singer I admired so much—that was my claim to fame. I kept thinking, I’m the girl who gets to do a demo for Anita Baker. You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t already a star.
Completely surreal—that’s how I’d describe those first weeks in Atlanta. You know that magical feeling you get the first time you go to Disney World at night, and you see the castle all lit up? That’s the feeling I had. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. I’d gone from performing in front of my mirror with a ketchup bottle in Severn to singing a duet with a huge star in a blinged-up powder room. If that dream could come true, anything in the world seemed possible.
IN THOSE DAYS, my whole way of thinking was very green—and it didn’t take L.A. and Kenny long to realize that. “You were in college to be a teacher,” Kenny said to me one afternoon. “How much does a guy have to make for you to date him?”
Without pausing, I declared, “I would’ve been making thirty thousand dollars a year as a teacher—so he would have to make thirty-one thousand dollars.”
They laughed so hard that they almost fell on the floor. “You’re absolutely going to change your mind,” Kenny said once he’d recovered from his outburst. “He’ll need to make more than that!”
Another time, Kenny mentioned the movie Star Wars, his favorite film. “You’ve seen it, right?” I hadn’t. So the next week, he pulled out his laser disc (a bigger version of a DVD) and made me sit for six hours and watch the entire trilogy.
Kenny and L.A. became like brothers to me—and I trusted them fully. We’d joke around in the studio, which is where I spent 99 percent of my time.
“Whatcha doin’?” Kenny would call and ask me.
“Not much,” I’d usually say.
“You should come by the studio.”
Even if Kenny and I weren’t working, I’d just go and observe whatever he was doing. I wanted to learn absolutely everything I could about the music business.
Back then, I had a horrible crush on Kenny. There, I said it: I was smitten. That changed in an instant on the day when I met Tracey, his fiancée—I didn’t even know he was engaged! Tracey was stunningly beautiful, and once I realized Kenny was in the trophy business, I knew I had no shot. Not that Kenny was paying me a bit of attention anyway: He has always seen me as a little sister. That’s still true even now.
One day while Kenny and I were in the studio, recording a demo, L.A. swung by. “How many records do you think you’ll sell on your first album?” he asked, smiling.
I pondered that for a moment. “I’ll go double platinum at least,” I said with confidence.
“You think you’ll go double platinum?” he said.
I nodded.
“Let’s make a deal,” he said. “If you go double platinum, I’ll buy you any kind of car you want.”
Without missing a beat, I told him, “I want a Porsche.” He and Kenny exchanged a glance and then chuckled.
I was L.A. and Kenny’s little tagalong. If either of them went out shopping, for instance, I’d be like, “Can I go?” I was curious about everything: how they picked their furniture, how they discerned good quality, and what they considered stylish. I was always respectful about giving them their space, yet I still asked a million questions. Especially around the studio, I was privy to a lot of conversations. “We’ll do four points on this song,” I once heard Kenny say. That’s how I discovered that Kenny and L.A. were five-point producers. Each “point” is equal to about 1 percent of the roya
lty profits that a producer receives on a song, and those points are usually based on the producer’s experience and notoriety. The number of points is negotiable: If a record sells one hundred thousand copies, for instance, then the producer’s percentage of profits can be bumped up by a half a point or more. It was all a whole new world for me—and like a sponge, I soaked it up.
For a girl who’d just scored a record deal with two of the biggest names in the business, I actually felt very lonely. My friend Kim had stayed in London to take a government job, so we rarely talked. And since I spent so much time in the studio, I didn’t make new friends around Atlanta. You’d think I would’ve been partying all the time, given how strict my upbringing had been. But the opposite was true: I somehow felt that I didn’t deserve to have fun—especially if my sisters couldn’t be there to enjoy it with me. My life was directed by guilt.
I once met Jermaine Jackson in Atlanta. When I told him how I was feeling about going solo and leaving my sisters behind, he said, “Toni, it doesn’t matter, because once you’re famous you can bring them in.” That was interesting advice since he was there working on “Word to the Badd”—a controversial song in which he criticizes his brother Michael. But Jermaine insisted that it wasn’t vindictive. “I called Michael, and he was cool with me doing it,” he said. I didn’t respond—that was between him and Michael. But I was thankful that Jermaine tried to help me with my guilt. If any musical family could relate to what I was experiencing, it would be the Jacksons.
I eventually moved out of the extended-stay hotel into a two-bedroom, garden-style apartment in Dunwoody. On the weekends, I called home frequently—but I didn’t share much about what was happening in the studio. I kept my updates very general: “Everything is going well,” I’d tell Mommy. My mother ended our conversations by repeating her favorite line: “Don’t forget about your sisters, Toni.” My response was always silence.
CHAPTER 9
The Boomerang Soundtrack
Miracles do happen—and by the time I was twenty-four, I’d been blessed with three huge ones. For starters, Bill Pettaway spotted me at that Amoco station. A year later, I got signed by the hottest R&B production duo in the world. Then one day in the winter of 1991, a third miracle came along—and it was one I couldn’t have dreamed up.
After weeks of negotiations, the execs at Paramount finally chose L.A. and Kenny to produce the Boomerang soundtrack. Everything at LaFace came to a halt. I’d been working with Tim and Ted, a team of producers that had been signed to the label. But once we got the soundtrack, L.A. asked me to drop everything so we could complete the demos for Anita Baker to hear.
We worked around the clock to get three songs done—and “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” was one of the tracks. When Kenny played the song for Anita, she didn’t love it. “Can you let me hear another version?” she asked. So Kenny changed up the song: He left the chorus the same, but he rewrote the verses and changed the melody. “What do you think of it now?” he asked Anita. “I like it—but I don’t know if it’s going to work for me.” Because of some personal circumstances, Anita couldn’t contribute after all. “What are we going to do?” Kenny asked. “Who else could we get?” Anita’s response that day turned out to be the third pivotal moment of my career: “Who’s that girl on the demo? She can sing. Why don’t you use her?”
Anita’s suggestion that Kenny use me is what sparked the thought in him. A couple days later, L.A. called and told me the news: “You know that duet that Anita was going to do with Kenny?”
I paused. “Yes,” I finally said.
“Well, you’re doing the song with Kenny.”
“Really!?” I shrieked.
“That’s right,” he said. “You’re going to be on the soundtrack.” I couldn’t even speak.
Over the next few days, my “one song” on the soundtrack turned into four—Kenny reworked the entire album. “This is not the Toni Braxton project,” the Paramount execs told him. So he scaled it back. Even still, I ended up singing “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” and “Give U My Heart.” I also contributed vocals for a song called “Reversal of a Dog,” with LaFace Cartel. And it all happened very fast: We often stayed in the studio till three or four in the morning. L.A. and Kenny delivered the entire album within weeks.
My image had to be transformed quickly so I’d be ready to do press for the soundtrack. “We’ve gotta get you into artist development right now,” said L.A. He and Kenny believed in spending money to make their artists look like stars—though it all came out of my project budget, of course. Pebbles was given the task of defining my look and updating my style. I got my eyebrows tweezed and shaped. A makeup artist picked out the right foundation, lipstick, and lashes for me (I had to get used to all that makeup . . . because I’d worn minimal makeup up until then, it felt a little heavy to me at first). Pebbles hired a clothing stylist, Bernard Jacobs, who chose the best styles for my shape. A shopper brought in clothing options for us to consider. I wanted to try big sweaters and fishnet stockings, and Pebbles told the shopper to go get them for me. She also picked out a colorful catsuit that she wanted me to wear—but I thought it was the most hideous thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to wear tight dresses that flared out at the bottom. “You’re short and petite,” Bernard told me, “so we really need to raise your hemlines.” And for some reason, I became obsessed with a certain polka-dot dress that dropped off at the shoulder. “Please lose the polka-dot dress,” Pebbles later told me. “It’s just wrong”—and now that I look back on it, she was absolutely right.
Marie Davis, the hairstylist, sharpened my pixie cut. I’d been bleaching my sideburns—but she told me, “Let’s make the sideburns work.” She refined my cut and took me shorter, darkened my hair color, and made my sideburns really stand out. The whole process felt like being turned into Miss Congeniality! Pebbles even showed me how to pout my lips when I sang “Love Shoulda Brought You Home.” She also taught me to love Chanel. “Chanel is your friend,” said Pebbles. She had every kind of Chanel product you could imagine: purses, jeans, necklaces, the No. 5 perfume. She once bought me a Chanel sweatshirt, which I still have.
L.A. and Kenny brought in David Nathan, a voice coach and media trainer who taught me how to do interviews. Since my pitch is so deep, David brought in a speech pathologist who showed me how to speak in a higher voice. David then did mock interviews with me. Once my overhaul was complete, I loved the way I looked. Where were Pebbles and her team of magicians during my Homey Toni Braxton days? If only I’d known them then.
The Boomerang soundtrack debuted on June 30, 1992. I’ll always remember the first time I saw the CD case. At the bottom of the front cover—beneath the names of renowned artists like Kenny, Shanice, Johnny Gill, and Boyz II Men—I saw three words: “Introducing Toni Braxton.” If my career had ended right then and there, I would’ve felt like I’d made it.
L.A. and Kenny hoped the soundtrack would do well—but none of us could’ve anticipated that “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” would take off the way it did. That song reached number four on the charts. Another single, “Give U My Heart,” my duet with Kenny, also became a hit, and the album sold millions of copies. My music was catching on across the country and around the world—but that didn’t necessarily make me identifiable in person.
True story: Kenny and I once appeared on Arsenio Hall’s show to sing “Give U My Heart,” and afterward, I went out to the car to sit for a few minutes. When I returned for an after-party hosted by the show (my first party!), the security guard at the door wouldn’t let me in. “I’m Toni Braxton!” I said insistently, but he didn’t believe me. I had a cell phone on me—one of those giant flip phones that everyone had in the nineties—but it wasn’t charged, so I couldn’t call Kenny or anyone else to the door. People knew my voice—but they didn’t always recognize my face.
Speaking of facial recognition, I got a nose job in 1992. I couldn’t breathe very well when I first got to Atlanta, and Dr. Raj Kanodia told me t
hat I should have sinus surgery. “You need to go ahead and fix that nose while you’re at it,” Pebbles told me. I’d been wanting to change my nose for years—I wanted it to be less broad. But because of the conservative ideas I was raised with, I struggled with the thought of altering my body. When Pebbles told me I needed a nose job, I somehow felt like I’d finally been given permission. When the surgeon examined my nose and noticed the fullness of my turbinates, he said, “I don’t know how you’re breathing.” That gave me further permission to finally do what I’d been too scared to go ahead with on my own.
Strangely, I wasn’t really nervous about telling my parents that I was planning to have a nose job—I think I was more fearful of the surgery itself than I was of their possible response. When I mentioned it to her on the phone, she just paused and said, “Oh Lord. Does that mean you have to go under anesthesia?” The answer was yes—and in the days leading up to the procedure, my parents started praying that I would make it through okay. My father didn’t really say too much about my choice to have the nose job. He was just like, “Baby, just be careful out there in Hollywood.” Mommy was totally supportive.
Three weeks after my initial consultation with Dr. Kanodia, I flew to Los Angeles to have the two-hour surgery done in his Beverly Hills office. That morning, my parents called me and said one last prayer for me on the phone. For some reason, I showed up in the doctor’s office at 6:30 A.M. wearing jeans that were too big for me (they kept sliding down my butt!) along with a button-down white shirt and the brightest red lipstick I owned—I later had to take off that lipstick because your face must be bare before surgery. My pulse must’ve been through the roof, because I could practically feel my heart beating out of my chest. Can I really go through with this? I thought. Before I could back out, a nurse rounded the corner and offered me a cap to cover my head and a gown. Moments later, I was on a gurney, head covered, with the anesthesiologist standing over me. I clutched the side of the bed. “I want you to count backward, Toni,” he said. I stared at him blankly for a moment, then began. “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven . . .”—and then suddenly I was out.