Songoftheday 4/1/22 - Listen girl who do you think I am? Don't you know that he was my man?
"He Wasn't Man Enough" - Toni Braxton
from the album The Heat (2000)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 32
Today's song is from Toni Braxton, whose sophomore album Secrets in 1996 had spun off two #1 pop crossover hits with "You're Making Me High" and "Un-Break My Heart", along with a top 20 two-fer following with "I Don't Want To" and "I Love Me Some Him". But despite that success, Toni was fighting with her record company over money, which at the time left her filing for bankruptcy. Though she wasn't able to break from LaFace/Arista Records, Toni did finally return four years later with her third effort The Heat. The lead single from the record was "He Wasn't Man Enough", written by producer Rodney "Darkchild" Jenkins, his brother Fred, LaShawn Daniels, and Harvey Mason. The song has Toni confronting her ex's wife, who is apparently accusing her of trying to steal him back. Braxton makes it clear that it was she that dumped him despite him begging to stay as his sidepiece. It's a different perspective, that of the "other woman" who is confident in her own self to let him go, and he wasn't good enough for her. The result was Toni's last truly "big" pop hit. The music video starts off unnecessarily with some gratuitous animation. If you can ignore that, you can get into one of the best grooves that Darkchild ever had done, along with a deliciously juicy plotline that has Toni's real-life ex Keri Lewis of the R&B group Mint Condition and his new wife actress Robin Givens playing the respective roles. Lordy, lord..
"He Wasn't Man Enough" spent two weeks in the runner-up spot on the American pop Hot 100 in Billboard magazine in May of 2000. The song topped Billboard's R&B Singles chart for four weeks, while climbing to #10 on their Rhythmic radio format list. The remixes of the track helped it go to #16 on the Dance Club Play chart as well. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Canada (#2), Australia (#5), the Netherlands (#5), New Zealand (#5), Denmark (#5), Romania (#5), Iceland (#5), Spain (#6), Switzerland (#7), Belgium (#8W/#14F), and Sweden (#10). Toni's The Heat album, released in April of that year, spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and topped the R&B Albums list for a week, going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2001, "He Wasn't Man Enough" won the trophy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. The Heat was also nominated for Best R&B Album, losing out to D'Angelo for his Voodoo set. Both Toni and the album will be back to the series.
(8/10)
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Here's Toni performing the song on The Tonight Show...
Up tomorrow: this country singer gets an education.
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