He Wasn Man Enough For Me
Review
In the four years since the release of her breakthrough sophomore effort, Secrets, Toni Braxton has sold several million records, filed for bankruptcy, sued her record label, and fought off -- with varying degrees of success --numerous pretenders to her throne. While Braxton is likely the finest, and certainly the most measured, of the little-clothing, big-voice divas, flashier acts including Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey have taken the lion's share of both the public's attention and the hard-won adult-contemporary audience.
The Heat is Braxton's best and most assured work yet, though it's overstuffed with the sort of superstar production and writing collaborations that usually signal overly stylized artistic rot. Braxton manages to hold her own amongst a phalanx of heavy hitters that includes longtime co-producer Babyface, assembly-line songwriter Diane Warren, and producer-writer Rodney Jerkins, whose contribution, the already No. 1 "He Wasn't Man Enough," is one of Braxton's savviest tracks ever.

The Heat features the usual mixture of soulful ballads and slightly frisky R&B tracks, which have made Braxton's fortune, albeit with a vague aura of edginess that's been missing from her past works. Contributions from TLC's Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and Dr. Dre, both of whom rap on their respective tracks, are presumably meant to give the perennially M.O.R. Braxton some street cred, which they do, sort of. The Dr. Dre/Braxton duet, "Just Be a Man About It," is a keeper, a sassy, forthright track that crackles with precisely the sort of smart, streetwise interplay Braxton needs if she's ever going to break out of the gilded cage she's long been too good for.