Toni Braxton Reunites With Babyface, Calls Him Her ‘Musical Husband’

Toni Braxton, who has reunited with Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds for the duets album, Love, Marriage & Divorce, has described the ten-time Grammy Award as her “musical husband.”

The pair first worked together on “Give U My Heart”, which was released in 1992 for the Eddie Murphy film, Boomerang, and helped to launch Braxton’s solo career.

In the non-too distant past though, both Braxton and Babyface announced that they had concluded their musical careers. They both admitted to Billboard that they only came out of their retirements to work with each other again.

Babyface revealed that he had become a tad tired of the music business, stating, “Artists who have done a lot of albums can sometimes get to the point where doing songs becomes more about making sure you can get a hit single.”

He continued, “Every artist gets caught up in that at some point. Then you find yourself being a little gun shy; worried about people’s opinions. You get tired of the game. It’s not fun.”

Toni echoed these points, but the pair admitted that they felt they needed to pay back their fans’ loyalty with further music. Babyface added, “When you can touch people, you just don’t give up on it,” before stating that he had to “push beyond those feelings” because he had been “given a gift.”

“That’s what our goal was when we sat down again,” he explained. “Let’s go back into the studio, figure out what to say and do it in a way where it’s fun and feels good. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We could have gone after it and nothing could have happened. But it was the opposite. It clicked immediately.”

Braxton then added, “Kenny has been showing me how to stop thinking like an artist and just be who I am. He told me just sing the song and enjoy it. Don’t think just about the commercial part of being the artist. Think about the artist who loves painting by himself and draws this beautiful portrait. That’s how you have to think of music now. You forgot.”

Toni declared that she has always tried to get Babyface on her projects, and she noted just how close the duo are by stating, “He’s my husband, really… my musical husband. We broke up and got back together.”

Love, Marriage & Divorce features their number 1 Adult R&B single, “Hurt You,” and it’s Babyface’s first studio album in almost seven years, and Toni’s since 2010’s Pulse.