Singer Toni Braxton has been dropped from Blackground/Universal Motown and is now suing her ex-manager for convincing her to leave her former label LaFace/Arista, where she made most of her hits.
According to several reports, the lawsuit claims Braxton hired Barry Hankerson as her manager in late 1997 and helped her negotiate a five-album deal with Arista the following year that netted her more than $20 million in advances.
However, Braxton claims the relationship turned ugly in 2002 when Hankerson began using “fraud, deception and double-dealing” to get her to leave the lucrative deal with Arista and sign exclusively with his Blackground in 2003.
The suit says Hankerson destroyed Braxton’s relationship with Arista through “underhanded double-talk” – secretly telling each party that the other wanted out of the relationship – despite having sold at least 20 million albums together.
Braxton released one album under Blackground, 2005’s “Libra.” But Braxton says her relationship with Hankerson became problematic and she tried to fire him as her manager. Instead, she claims, he turned against her.