u/Ok_Resident_5022

Toni Braxton has made a career in singing, songwriting, acting, and appearing on reality television. She has won seven Grammy Awards, nine Billboard Music Awards, seven American Music Awards, and numerous other accolades. In 2011, Braxton was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, and she was honored with the Legend Award at the Soul Train Music Awards in 2017.

In the late-1980s, Toni Braxton began performing with her sisters in an R&B group known as The Braxtons, who were signed to Arista Records. After gaining the attention of producers Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Toni Braxton signed to LaFace Records as a soloist and released her self-titled debut album in 1993. The album reached #1 on the Billboard 200 for two weeks and #1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart for three weeks, selling 10 million copies worldwide and spawning the hit singles “Another Sad Love Song”, “Breathe Again”, “Seven Whole Days”, and “You Mean the World to Me”. During this era, Braxton also recorded a hit song for the soundtrack of the 1992 motion picture Boomerang, “Love Shoulda Brought You Home”, which also appeared on the album. The album yielded Braxton three Grammy Awards, including for Best New Artist.

In 1996, Toni Braxton released her sophomore album Secrets. The album included the hit singles “You’re Makin’ Me High”/“Let It Flow” (a double A-side), “Un-Break My Heart”, “I Don’t Want To”/“I Love Me Some Him” (a double A-side), and “How Could an Angel Break My Heart”. “Let It Flow” was originally released as a part of the soundtrack album for the 1995 motion picture Waiting to Exhale. “You’re Makin’ Me High” and “Let It Flow” both peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, “I Don’t Want To”/“I Love Me Some Him” peaked at #19, and “How Could an Angel Break My Heart” (with the saxophonist Kenny G) was a hit internationally. “Un-Break My Heart” peaked at #1 for eleven weeks. With her double A-side single, “You’re Makin’ Me High”/“Let It Flow”, which sold over 1 million copies worldwide and was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Toni Braxton had the highest-selling R&B single for the year of 1996. Secrets debuted and peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200, debuted at #1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and sold 170000 copies in its first week. The album would go on to sell over 15 million copies worldwide and be certified 8x Platinum by the RIAA.

Although Braxton’s career extended beyond the year 2000, the album released that year is the one that many people consider her last “major” career release. The Heat was released by LaFace Records on April 25, 2000, debuting at #2 on the Billboard 200 and selling 199000 copies in its first week. The album was nominated for Best R&B Album at the 2001 Grammy Awards, while its lead single (“He Wasn’t Man Enough”) won Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and was nominated for Best R&B Song. The Heat was certified 2x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over 2 million copies in the United States. The album sold over 4 million copies worldwide. “He Wasn’t Man Enough”, “Just Be A Man About It”, and “Spanish Guitar” are all considered hit singles from this album. The first of these singles peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks and #1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for four weeks, while the second of those singles peaked within the top 40 and top 10 of these respective charts.

While Toni Braxton’s greatest career success streak was short-lived, it reached a measurable height. In her first 7-8 years, Toni Braxton scored two Billboard Hot 100 #1 hits, 6 Billboard Hot 100 top-ten hits (including those number-ones), one #1 album (her debut for two weeks) and two #2 albums on the Billboard 200 (making up the total of the albums she released during this time), eleven top-ten hits on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart (including two #1 hits), and three #1 entries on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart (all of those she released during this time, debut for 3 weeks and the others for 1). She also released three albums that, in the long run (beyond the 1990s), would sell a rough cumulative 29 million copies worldwide. (This is to be counted separately from the total sales of all albums she released after The Heat, which in itself is still not a particularly bad number.) Toni Braxton achieved a lot in merely 7-8 years of dominance, which is about as much as some artists continue to strive for with additional years of experience. Some of her peers also had similarly short commercial peaks, rising to prominence and eventually losing steam at about the same times as Toni, but they achieved less within that timeline. Toni had some fierce competition during the 1990s, but her greatest peaks are quite unmatched by anyone from that era except for Mary J. Blige, who was one of the more monumental R&B artists of the 1990s and had an extended period of dominance in the 2000s that even Toni herself did not have.

“I Wish It Would Rain” is the first single from the 1967 album by The Temptations, The Temptations Wish It Would Rain, released under the “Gordy” imprint of Motown Records. The album was the last commercial release of the group’s “Classic-5” era, during which David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Otis Williams served as members of The Temptations.

“I Wish It Would Rain” was produced by Norman Whitfield and penned by Motown staff writer Rodger Penzabene. The lyrics depict a heartbroken man whose woman had just left him, and they were a true story for Penzabene, who had just learned that his wife was cheating on him.

In response to his trouble in paradise, Penzabene penned this single as well as the follow-up single, “I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You)”. He did not survive another week following the release of “I Wish It Would Rain”, as he tragically took his own life less than a week later.

The Temptations did such a great job conveying the emotion of the lyrics in their vocals that it just tears at you to know the backstory. They put all of Rodger Penzabene’s pain in this single. The way you feel when listening to it is probably exactly how he felt when he was writing it.

“I Wish It Would Rain” peaked at #4 for three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 from February to March of 1968, and at #1 on the Billboard R&B Singles chart.

Here is the link to the full recording of “Who’s Counting Heartaches”. I had to cut that one short because Reddit currently does not allow videos longer than 15 minutes to be posted.

How many other albums qualify for the title? I know there have been many other great ones, including some from other musically gifted women with incredible multi-album runs, such as Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige.

How many of JANET’s other albums qualify for this title? Albums #3 (Control) through #7 (All For You) from Janet get the most love out of her entire discography, but I think only The Velvet Rope can compete with Rhythm Nation as her greatest body of work, as well as the greatest when you factor in albums from other female artists.

Rhythm Nation 1814 made history as the first album by a female artist to score seven top-five hits on the Billboard Hot 100, three of which peaked at #1. The album was released in September 1989, remained commercially relevant through 1991, and to this day in 2026, there still has not been any album to match or surpass seven top-five hits.

By early-1991, Rhythm Nation 1814 had been charting for over 70 weeks. It spent four weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 in 1989, and it became the #1 album of 1990 despite not charting at #1 for a single week in 1990. The album crossed the 6x Platinum milestone in the US during its first three years of release, and it would eventually sell over 12 million copies worldwide. The album maintained an impressive level of success and cultural relevance—between chart peaks, record sales, awards and accolades, and every other metric—for its first three years as a public product.

Rhythm Nation 1814 also touches on some very important cultural topics such as racism/injustice, poverty, substance abuse, violence/tragedy, etc. This is all on top of being a very cohesive project sonically and being highly acclaimed by critics.