Toni Braxton appeared on VH1, Behind the Music special Monday night [Oct. 29th]. Toni has had her fair share of triumphs and pitfalls during her reign in the music industry and she almost gave it all up, but in 2010 Toni’s mustered up the will and determination to RISE again and get Toni back on the music track, the popularity charts [thanks to her hit reality tv show The Braxton’s] and free from guilt [which she endored for many years]
“I always felt guilty. My mom would say “don’t forget about your sisters.” So, it made me feel like I could never be happy and that guilt I took with me for the rest of my life. I always felt like what I gave wasn’t enough. I often wondered if I had stayed, could I have changed the outcome,” Braxton said of life prior to the show. “It definitely makes me feel like okay, I am helping my family. But then I discovered they really didn’t need my help because they were so talented.”
In the special, Toni talked about her public and personal fail when she declared bankruptcy just a few months after topping #2 Billboard charts and selling over 20 million records with her classic hits ” Seven Whole Days” “He Wasn’t Man Enough For Me”, “Breathe Again”, “Making Me High”, “Love Should Of Brought You Home” “Unbreak My Heart“. The singer also talked about her surprise of having to undergo a second bankruptcy, a divorce, learning of her son’s ‘Autism‘, and starting over with a new family reality show “The Braxton’s” [which airs on WEtv network] Toni went on to explain how hurt and humiliated she felt following her 1998 interview with Oprah [whom she claims publicly shamed her for going bankupt while own Gucci items.
“She said, ‘I hear you have Gucci flatware; I’m Oprah Winfrey and I don’t have Gucci flatware…’ You didn’t have Gucci flatware because you didn’t wanna buy it; it’s not because you couldn’t afford it.” Squeezing her thumb and forefinger together, Braxton recalls, “She made me feel this big.”
The full episode will re-air on VH1 Thursday, November 1 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, November 4 at 10 am.
Here’s one of my favorite and songs of TB: “Just Be A Man About It”