Toni Braxton’s career has been hampered at times by multiple bankruptcies, coping with lupus, and reality TV show drama on Braxton Family Values. There was even a short-lived retirement. But after 2018’s excellent Sex and Cigarettes, her first album in almost a decade, Braxton turns around another strong release. It’s clear the R&B star wants you to remember her name.

In fact, she spends more than three minutes literally spelling it out in the album’s title track, adding to the small library of songs that double up as spelling bees (alongside Gwen Stefani’s “bananas”, and Fergie ensuring the corrected order of Os and Us in “glamorous”). We’re treated to more orthographic pop with the very next track, Braxton spelling out “o-v-e-r” on a minor-key laden anthem to toxic on-off relationships that neither partner has the guts to end.

She knows how to lend her sexy contralto to everything from signature 1996 ballad Un-Break My Heart to 2000’s dancefloor hit He Wasn’t Man Enough, and Spell My Name shows Braxton hasn’t lost her broad vocal range or her ability to slot into multiple mood playlists. It has everything you want from a full-bodied R&B record: songs to cry to, vibe to, and make babies to.

Braxton’s usual husky tones on the verse of Dance give way to an unusually high-pitched chorus, but the vivacious melody paired with trumpets makes for an infectious pop hit. There are cameos from Missy Elliott, who respectfully screams the artist’s name at the beginning of Do It, and HER, who makes Gotta Move On an inter-generational affair. It’s a reminder, much like the whole of Spell My Name, that Braxton – once an R&B trailblazer – is still hungry to be a part of the genre’s resurgence.