Toni Braxton: The Heat : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Large-living R&B divas rarely take risks: Balladeers like Toni Braxton tend to favor familiar scripts, interchangeable backdrops and similarly successful co-stars. But that doesn't mean they don't deliver. On the contrary, Toni Braxton's third Babyface-dominated album, The Heat, updates and diversifies her stylistic surroundings while delivering the expected boudoir soundtrack. Unlike many of her peers, this preacher's daughter doesn't substitute grandstanding technique for feeling. Braxton's supple alto rests easily within mainstream R&B's smooove sonic furniture, her croons displaying husky quirks as the track goes through the multiplatinum motions on "Spanish Guitar," a Latin-conscious "Un-Break My Heart" clone. Producer Rodney "DarkChild" Jerkins ups the tempo, syncopation and talk-show drama on "He Wasn't Man Enough," while "The Art of Love" delivers only sighs, moans and pillow talk. But even when she's demanding that scrubs clean up their act, Braxton radiates sublimely sensual romance. (RS 842)

BARRY WALTERS