Toni Braxton Teases New Music, Tour Coming In 2017
Toni Braxton sent out a Tweet letting fans know she would have some new music in 2017. When asked if Braxton would have a tour to go along with it, Toni replied, “you bet!”
new year…new music ? ??
— Toni Braxton (@tonibraxton) December 29, 2016
It will be the first new music from Toni Braxton in three years. In 2014, Braxton released Love, Marriage, and Divorce. The album peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard charts but only sold a dismal 211,000 copies in the United States. Despite its lack of commercial success, the album won a Grammy. However, compared to Toni’s earlier albums of the 1990s which pulled in more than 5,000,000 sales each, Love, Marriage, and Divorce appeared to be somewhat of a failure for Braxton. Toni, however, still remains a hot commodity as an entertainer.
Braxton released a Christmas album, Braxton Family Christmas in 2015 with her sisters which had moderate success. In fact, it’s Toni’s collaboration with her sisters that has kept her face and voice on the map. Toni has appeared with her sisters Tamar, Traci, Towanda, and Trina, along with their mother Evelyn in the WEtv series Braxton Family Values since 2011 and a new season of the show is expected to hit the airwaves in January.
While fans of her music are undoubtedly excited to hear that Toni is putting together some new tracks, her decision to return to touring is sure to cause a stir. According to E!, Braxton revealed several years ago that she is suffering from lupus. The autoimmune disorder wreaks havoc on the body causing significant pain and exhaustion but it can also cause fatal heart disease.
As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Toni Braxton had to cancel a few shows while touring in 2016 due to hospitalizations to treat and monitor her lupus. Braxton isn’t the only performer to face the battle as fellow musicians Lady Gaga and Selena Gomez have had to cancel or postpone tour dates for the same reason, but many wonder if Toni’s rigorous schedule of touring, creating music, and filming her reality season is too much for Braxton’s body to handle.
In a 2015 interview with Huffington Post Live, Braxton admitted that balancing the roles of being an entertainer, entrepreneur, mother, sister, and girlfriend was too overwhelming to deal with when battling her disease.
“You know some days I can’t balance it all. I just have to lay in bed,” Braxton admitted.
“Pretty much when you have lupus you feel like you have the flu every day. Some days you get through it. But for me, if I’m not feeling well, I tend to tell my kids ‘Oh mommy’s just going to relax in bed today and kind of take it easy’ but it is challenging when I am working because I have to put on that smiling face anyway or do a show and perform for an hour or hour and a half.”
But when it comes to whether or not her lupus deters Braxton from her passion of music, Toni went on to explain that she can’t let it win.
“If I can’t perform, I still figure it out. I don’t know. Sometimes I look back like that evening and I go ‘how did I get through that?’ but friends and family support me but I just try to put on a smiley face and get through it.”
Despite Braxton’s desire to embrace the show must go on philosophy, however, her multiple hospitalizations in 2016 may suggest that it’s getting more and more difficult for Toni to manage putting on that smiley face to perform. Regardless, Braxton’s positive attitude and intention to push forward with new music in the new year has got to be not only an exciting prospect for Toni’s fans to look forward to but encouraging for others suffering from a debilitating illness.
[Featured Image by Randy Shropshire/Getty Images.]
