Toni Braxton

Singer-Songwriter

Toni Michele Braxton is an American R&B singer-songwriter, pianist, musician, record producer, actress, television personality, and philanthropist. Rising to fame in the beginning of the 1990s, Braxton quickly established herself as an R&B icon and became one of the best-selling female artists of the 1990s decade, garnering her honorific titles such as the "Queen of R&B" and being recognized as one of the most outstanding voices of this generation

 

Braxton and her siblings were raised in a strict religious household,[2] and Braxton's first performing experience was singing in her church choir.[2]

She was born in Severn, Maryland.[citation needed] Her father, Michael Conrad Braxton, Sr., was a Methodist[3][4] clergyman and power company worker, and her mother, Evelyn Jackson, a native of South Carolina, was a former opera singer and cosmetologist, as well as a pastor.[5][6] Braxton's maternal grandfather was also a pastor.[7]

Braxton is the eldest of six siblings. She has a younger brother Michael, Jr. (born in 1968) and four younger sisters Traci (born in 1971), Towanda (born in 1973), Trina (born in 1974), and Tamar (born in 1977).[citation needed] Braxton attended Bowie State University to obtain a teaching degree,[8] but decided to sing professionally after she was discovered by William E. Pettaway, Jr., who reportedly heard her singing to herself while pumping gas.[9]

But according to Braxton during her appearance on May 24, 2014 broadcast of NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, she was not singing to herself at the gas station. Pettaway, working as an attendant at the Annapolis service station where she was refueling, recognized her from local performances and introduced himself, saying he wanted to produce her. Though skeptical, Braxton decided to, in her words, "take a chance" and accepted.