"He said: 'You've stopped believing in yourself. "He helped me work on getting my mojo back," she explains. In the wake of that spontaneous decision, friends rallied round to change her mind – among them Kenneth " Babyface" Edmonds, the R&B pioneer from under whose wing she emerged in 1992. Just a year on, though, Braxton is making the kind of easily assured comeback that's eluded her for so long.
Last February, with her 12-year marriage in the process of collapsing, she found herself at her lowest ebb, and announced her retirement from the music industry with immediate effect: "I felt like I had nothing left to offer myself, let alone any fans or listeners."
Over the past decade, Braxton has been known more for sundry travails – legal disputes with no fewer than three record labels, multiple bankruptcies, health issues, personal turbulence – than her songs. It's also a disposition that's been hard-won – or rather, hard-regained. There's nothing off-putting about this – she is funny and self-aware rather than obliviously entitled, and gracious to a fault – but her way with a metaphor and habit of slipping into the third person when talking about herself is a reminder that Braxton is an R&B diva of two decades' standing who came of age during the 90s, when aloof hauteur was more valued than approachability. "You may have to change a few accessories here and there, but that's OK." "I'm like that classic black dress that never goes out of style," she pronounces in lofty tones. D espite the crackly transatlantic phone line, Toni Braxton's regal disposition comes through loud and clear.