Despite this high-profile relationship, you will not hear too many of-the-moment motifs on the album. Braxton’s latest album, Sex & Cigarettes, comes on the heels of an even bigger twist in her life story: Earlier this year, she announced her engagement to Cash Money’s larger-than-life impresario, Birdman. Perhaps Love, Marriage, & Divorce was more like one life in a cat’s nine. “I feel like I’ve been given a third chance,” Braxton told The Guardian around this time. Rooted in soulful sounds and themes of triumphing over pain-the same ones they’ve been cultivating together since recording “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” for the Boomerang soundtrack in 1992-it won them a Grammy for Best R&B Album, and stands as some of the best work of her career. In the series’ second and third seasons, Braxton and longtime collaborator Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds began working on an album that became their 2014 duets set Love, Marriage, & Divorce. Braxton’s sister Tamar became the breakout star-she and her now-ex-husband, producer Vincent Herbert, even got a spin-off, “Tamar & Vince”-but themes of sibling rivalry and other familial turmoil, from DUI to divorce, ruled the show. As Toni has always been the family’s biggest name in the world outside the show, there is an undertone of benevolence implied in her decision to include her sisters on her journey. Since 2011, she’s starred in a hit reality show, “Braxton Family Values,” along with her four sisters, mother, and her two sons (whose father is her ex-husband, Keri Lewis of ’90s R&B group Mint Condition).

That’s not to say that Braxton has been out of the public eye.

Toni braxton full album