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Toni Braxton – Sex & Cigarettes

Nine tracks from a late-career album that is tougher, funnier and more bitter than anything its maker released at her commercial peak.

toni-braxton-sex-cigarettes

Toni Braxton: Sex & Cigarettes (2018)

Toni Braxton has one of the most distinctive instruments in the history of popular music — a contralto so low that early in her career the industry reportedly struggled to place her, and a vibrato that is entirely her own. She has also had a career unusually marked by bankruptcies, label disputes and serious illness.

Sex & Cigarettes was her first album in four years and it is short, focused and unsentimental. At nine tracks it does not outstay its welcome, and the writing has an edge her nineties ballads carefully avoided: this is a record about infidelity, aging and refusing to be pleasant about either.

The production is deliberately spare. Where her biggest hits were built on enormous Babyface arrangements, this one leaves the voice largely exposed, which at this stage of a career is a considerable act of confidence.

What to listen for

"Long As I Live" is the best thing here and the closest to a classic Braxton single — a slow, aching record with a lyric that never quite lets the other person off.

"Deadwood" opens the album and sets the tone: the metaphor is unflattering and she does not soften it.

"FOH" is the funniest and most direct thing on the record, and it is a reminder that her voice can do contempt as well as heartbreak.

"Sex & Cigarettes" is the title track and the most atmospheric, and "Coping" is the most emotionally naked.

"My Heart" with Colbie Caillat is the unexpected pairing, and "Missin'" and "Sorry" round out a set with no filler on it.

Go deeper

Toni Braxton (1993) and Secrets (1996) are the commercial peaks and the records where Babyface and L.A. Reid built the sound around her. Love, Marriage & Divorce (2014) with Babyface is the other great late record.

For the wider story of low female voices in soul: Anita Baker, Sade and Nina Simone, all of whom had to be marketed around rather than into the expectations of the day.

Why the length is the point: nine tracks and barely half an hour, at a stage of a career when the temptation is to pad. The result has no weak stretch and no obligatory ballad, and the spareness of the production leaves that famously low voice more exposed than it was on any of the records that made her famous. That is a considerable act of confidence.

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