After a nearly four-year absence from recording, Toni Braxton returns with The Heat, her third album. Full of drama--sometimes melodrama--it unsurprisingly puts Braxton's rich voice and command of nuance front and centre of one state-of-the-art track after another. Unfortunately, The Heat plays up her taste for ballads to such a point that the disc bores itself into a quiet-storm rut. The big exception is the Rodney-Jerkins-produced first single "He Wasn't Man Enough". … mehrThe song's smouldering rebuff and Jerkins's measured funk make a perfect match for Braxton's matter-of-fact hauteur. She also delivers a tough take on reality with "Just Be a Man About It", which pits her against Dr. Dre in a breakup scenario that carries much more force than weightless trifles such as the filler sex-me-up "The Art of Love" and Diane Warren's "Spanish Guitar". --Bob Roget weniger
1 - He Wasn't Man Enough
2 - Heat
3 - Spanish Guitar
4 - Just Be A Man About It
5 - Gimme Some… mehr
6 - I'm Still Breathing
7 - Fairly Tale
8 - Art Of Love
9 - Speaking In Tongues
10 - Maybe
11 - You've Been Wrong
12 - Never Just For A Ring weniger