Rating:
Genre:
R&B
Release Date: 03/25/2008
Most modern-day female
pop singers start their careers doing their sexy, stylish dance-oriented material then settle into a career as an
adult contemporary crooner.
Toni Braxton didn't follow that route. She started the '90s singing elegant, refined
quiet storm ballads and ended it singing sleek
dance-pop tunes as she slinked around in skimpy outfits. She wasn't the only one of her peers to follow this trajectory --
Mariah Carey pretty much did the same thing, only to the extreme -- but it's a little odd to listen to
Braxton evolve from the sophisticated
urban contemporary crooner to oversexed
R&B thrush, even if it's not a bad thing at all. One thing that elevated
Braxton above her peers is that she was a controlled, powerful singer who rarely oversang, and she had a good selection of material, much of it written or co-written by
Babyface. That's why her 18-track hits collection
Ultimate Toni Braxton works well even through her shifts in style -- she is a confident enough performer to sell both the slow romantic
ballads and material that swings harder. That's not to say that there aren't some slow spots here -- the previously unreleased cuts are no great shakes, and sometimes the abundance of slow numbers makes things sound too samey -- but she was one of the top
urban soul singers of the '90s, and this is the album that illustrates why.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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