Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir (12 page)

I once met Jermaine Jackson in Atlanta. When I told him how I was feeling about going solo and leaving my sisters behind, he said, “Toni, it doesn’t matter, because once you’re famous you can bring them in.” That was interesting advice since he was there working on “Word to the Badd”—a controversial song in which he criticizes his brother Michael. But Jermaine insisted that it wasn’t vindictive. “I called Michael, and he was cool with me doing it,” he said. I didn’t respond—that was between him and Michael. But I was thankful that Jermaine tried to help me with my guilt. If any musical family could relate to what I was experiencing, it would be the Jacksons.

I eventually moved out of the extended-stay hotel into a two-bedroom, garden-style apartment in Dunwoody. On the weekends, I called home frequently—but I didn’t share much about what was happening in the studio. I kept my updates very general: “Everything is going well,” I’d tell Mommy. My mother ended our conversations by repeating her favorite line: “Don’t forget about your sisters, Toni.” My response was always silence.

M
iracles do happen—and by the time I was twenty-four, I’d been blessed with three huge ones. For starters, Bill Pettaway spotted me at that Amoco station. A year later, I got signed by the hottest R&B production duo in the world. Then one day in the winter of 1991, a third miracle came along—and it was one I couldn’t have dreamed up.

After weeks of negotiations, the execs at Paramount finally chose L.A. and Kenny to produce the
Boomerang
soundtrack. Everything at LaFace came to a halt. I’d been working with Tim and Ted, a team of producers that had been signed to the label. But once we got the soundtrack, L.A. asked me to drop everything so we could complete the demos for Anita Baker to hear.

We worked around the clock to get three songs done—and “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” was one of the tracks. When Kenny played the song for Anita, she didn’t love it. “Can you let me hear another version?” she asked. So Kenny changed up the song: He left the chorus the same, but he rewrote the verses and changed the melody. “What do you think of it now?” he asked Anita. “I like it—but I don’t know if it’s going to work for me.” Because of some personal circumstances, Anita couldn’t contribute after all. “What are we going to do?” Kenny asked. “Who else could we get?” Anita’s response that day turned out to be the third pivotal moment of my career: “Who’s that girl on the demo? She can sing. Why don’t you use her?”

Anita’s suggestion that Kenny use me is what sparked the thought in him. A couple days later, L.A. called and told me the news: “You know that duet that Anita was going to do with Kenny?”

I paused. “Yes,” I finally said.

“Well, you’re doing the song with Kenny.”

“Really!?” I shrieked.

“That’s right,” he said. “You’re going to be on the soundtrack.” I couldn’t even speak.

Over the next few days, my “one song” on the soundtrack turned into four—Kenny reworked the entire album. “This is not the Toni Braxton project,” the Paramount execs told him. So he scaled it back. Even still, I ended up singing “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” and “Give U My Heart.” I also contributed vocals for a song called “Reversal of a Dog,” with LaFace Cartel. And it all happened very fast: We often stayed in the studio till three or four in the morning. L.A. and Kenny delivered the entire album within weeks.

My image had to be transformed quickly so I’d be ready to do press for the soundtrack. “We’ve gotta get you into artist development right now,” said L.A. He and Kenny believed in spending money to make their artists look like stars—though it all came out of my project budget, of course. Pebbles was given the task of defining my look and updating my style. I got my eyebrows tweezed and shaped. A makeup artist picked out the right foundation, lipstick, and lashes for me (I had to get used to all that makeup . . . because I’d worn minimal makeup up until then, it felt a little heavy to me at first). Pebbles hired a clothing stylist, Bernard Jacobs, who chose the best styles for my shape. A shopper brought in clothing options for us to consider. I wanted to try big sweaters and fishnet stockings, and Pebbles told the shopper to go get them for me. She also picked out a colorful catsuit that she wanted me to wear—but I thought it was the most hideous thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to wear tight dresses that flared out at the bottom. “You’re short and petite,” Bernard told me, “so we really need to raise your hemlines.” And for some reason, I became obsessed with a certain polka-dot dress that dropped off at the shoulder. “Please lose the polka-dot dress,” Pebbles later told me. “It’s just wrong”—and now that I look back on it, she was absolutely right.

Marie Davis, the hairstylist, sharpened my pixie cut. I’d been bleaching my sideburns—but she told me, “Let’s make the sideburns work.” She refined my cut and took me shorter, darkened my hair color, and made my sideburns really stand out. The whole process felt like being turned into Miss Congeniality! Pebbles even showed me how to pout my lips when I sang “Love Shoulda Brought You Home.” She also taught me to love Chanel. “Chanel is your friend,” said Pebbles. She had every kind of Chanel product you could imagine: purses, jeans, necklaces, the No. 5 perfume. She once bought me a Chanel sweatshirt, which I still have.

L.A. and Kenny brought in David Nathan, a voice coach and media trainer who taught me how to do interviews. Since my pitch is so deep, David brought in a speech pathologist who showed me how to speak in a higher voice. David then did mock interviews with me. Once my overhaul was complete, I loved the way I looked. Where were Pebbles and her team of magicians during my Homey Toni Braxton days? If only I’d known them then.

The
Boomerang
soundtrack debuted on June 30, 1992. I’ll always remember the first time I saw the CD case. At the bottom of the front cover—beneath the names of renowned artists like Kenny, Shanice, Johnny Gill, and Boyz II Men—I saw three words: “Introducing Toni Braxton.” If my career had ended right then and there, I would’ve felt like I’d made it.

L.A. and Kenny hoped the soundtrack would do well—but none of us could’ve anticipated that “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” would take off the way it did. That song reached number four on the charts. Another single, “Give U My Heart,” my duet with Kenny, also became a hit, and the album sold millions of copies. My music was catching on across the country and around the world—but that didn’t necessarily make me identifiable in person.

True story: Kenny and I once appeared on Arsenio Hall’s show to sing “Give U My Heart,” and afterward, I went out to the car to sit for a few minutes. When I returned for an after-party hosted by the show (my first party!), the security guard at the door wouldn’t let me in. “I’m Toni Braxton!” I said insistently, but he didn’t believe me. I had a cell phone on me—one of those giant flip phones that everyone had in the nineties—but it wasn’t charged, so I couldn’t call Kenny or anyone else to the door. People knew my voice—but they didn’t always recognize my face.

Speaking of facial recognition, I got a nose job in 1992. I couldn’t breathe very well when I first got to Atlanta, and Dr. Raj Kanodia told me that I should have sinus surgery. “You need to go ahead and fix that nose while you’re at it,” Pebbles told me. I’d been wanting to change my nose for years—I wanted it to be less broad. But because of the conservative ideas I was raised with, I struggled with the thought of altering my body. When Pebbles told me I needed a nose job, I somehow felt like I’d finally been given permission. When the surgeon examined my nose and noticed the fullness of my turbinates, he said, “I don’t know how you’re breathing.” That gave me further permission to finally do what I’d been too scared to go ahead with on my own.

Strangely, I wasn’t really nervous about telling my parents that I was planning to have a nose job—I think I was more fearful of the surgery itself than I was of their possible response. When I mentioned it to her on the phone, she just paused and said, “Oh Lord. Does that mean you have to go under anesthesia?” The answer was yes—and in the days leading up to the procedure, my parents started praying that I would make it through okay. My father didn’t really say too much about my choice to have the nose job. He was just like, “Baby, just be careful out there in Hollywood.” Mommy was totally supportive.

Three weeks after my initial consultation with Dr. Kanodia, I flew to Los Angeles to have the two-hour surgery done in his Beverly Hills office. That morning, my parents called me and said one last prayer for me on the phone. For some reason, I showed up in the doctor’s office at 6:30
A.M.
wearing jeans that were too big for me (they kept sliding down my butt!) along with a button-down white shirt and the brightest red lipstick I owned—I later had to take off that lipstick because your face must be bare before surgery. My pulse must’ve been through the roof, because I could practically feel my heart beating out of my chest.
Can I really go through with this?
I thought. Before I could back out, a nurse rounded the corner and offered me a cap to cover my head and a gown. Moments later, I was on a gurney, head covered, with the anesthesiologist standing over me. I clutched the side of the bed. “I want you to count backward, Toni,” he said. I stared at him blankly for a moment, then began. “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven . . .”—and then suddenly I was out.

When my eyelids slid open two hours later, I could hardly breathe. After the surgery, the doctor had packed my nostrils with sponge and gauze—this was an old-school nose job. My throat was on fire from the breathing tubes the doctor had put down my throat. And my eyes felt painful and puffy. Later, when I gathered the strength to get up and look in the mirror, I just about scared myself. I looked like I’d been in a very big fight—one that I’d apparently lost. “Will the swelling go down?” I asked the doctor. “Yes, eventually,” he told me. If there was any chance at all that he was wrong about that, my singing career would’ve suddenly been done. That’s just how much of a hot mess my whole face was.

As it turns out, it took three years for the swelling to completely go away, and that was the point: L.A. and Kenny wanted the change to be gradual so it wouldn’t look like I rushed out and had a nose job. And of course, I later got my boobies done—just about every female performer gets breast implants. Plus, I’d always been shaped like a gymnast—size double A breasts and thunder thighs. In fact, I wish I would’ve had lipo on my inner thighs. I’ve always hated them.

By the time I went in to see a Los Angeles surgeon about breast implants, I was more comfortable with the idea of altering my appearance, thanks to the nose job. But that didn’t mean I was over my jitters about anesthesia or the postsurgery pain. In fact, I made an appointment for the procedure—but then I canceled it at the last minute because I got scared. During our pre-op appointment, the surgeon had talked me through all of the options for implants. “How full do you want your breasts?” he said. I didn’t really know. “I think your frame would look good with a cup size that’s somewhere between a C and a D.” I nodded. I then had to choose what kind of implants I wanted, silicone or saline—and I chose saline. “We’ll make the incision in your underarm,” he told me. He then explained the risks (most of which had to do with the anesthesia) . . . which is right around the time I began wondering again whether I was ready for this. In fact, that’s probably why I ended up canceling our scheduled surgery.

But my courage returned—and a few weeks later, I put on that gown and surgical cap. This time when I awakened, I felt like I had an elephant sitting on top of my chest. That’s just how intense the pressure was! They were swollen for a while, but in that case, it made them look even fuller. I loved how they looked. At last—Homey Toni Braxton had some curves. And finally, my taping days were done: Before I got the breast implants, my stylist would use duct tape beneath my tiny boobs to make it look like I had cleavage.

And can I be honest with you about something else? To this day, I am still happy I got that nose job. Yes, I wish I’d gotten it smaller, but the new nose did fit my face so much better. Making my bridge more narrow and my nostrils smaller gave my nose a more feminine look. And though my parents were scared for me to have the procedure, they liked the final result as much as I did. And a couple of my sisters were like, “tell me everything about the surgery—because I might have my nose done, too!”

Eight weeks after my nose job, we shot the video for “Another Sad Love Song”—and yes, our plan worked, because no one seemed to notice a change. I also began performing live. After all those years of singing in church, the record company didn’t have to do much to mold me as a live performer. And of course, once our first single debuted, I set out on a grueling promotional tour to every urban center around the country. I did radio lead-ins like “Hi, this is Toni Braxton!” I shook lots of hands, posed for countless photos, and sat for dozens of interviews. The hard work paid off: DJs really grasped on to my songs. “Who’s the short girl with the chubby cheeks, the pixie haircut, and the big ol’ butt?” people started asking. I never thought I had a big butt—though I do have Serena Williams thighs and an athletic build! But that wasn’t important. What mattered is that I was getting a whole lot of attention for two songs that weren’t even originally written for me. Thank you, Anita Baker.

AROUND THE TIME
when
Boomerang
took off, my manager called me up one day. “L.A.’s brother likes you,” he told me. “You don’t have to be his girlfriend, but why don’t you flirt with him a little? You’re in the business now—you’ve gotta hang out with people sometimes.” I’d worked with L.A.’s brother, Bryant, a few times—he was an A&R manager at LaFace, and he’d been overseeing the songs I did with Tim and Ted. I thought he was a nice guy, yet I wasn’t interested in a romance. He was averagely attractive. But he just wasn’t my type—a little too short.

On the day my manager called, my mind flashed back to an experience I’d once had in Maryland. When I was nineteen, I worked as a background singer for a rapper whose Caucasian manager liked me—but the feeling wasn’t mutual. He was older, overweight, and frumpy. “Girl,” the rapper later told me, “if you want to be successful in this business, you’re going to have to get with a few guys you don’t like.”