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
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
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