Deceased--Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston
August 9th, 1963 to February 11th, 2012

Not a good month for Black History Month.

February 1st...Don Cornelius .

"Whitney Houston dead: She was spotted displaying erratic behavior"

February 11th, 2012

Los Angeles Times

Whitney Houston, who found fame as one of pop’s biggest voices, has died. She was 48.

Houston died Saturday afternoon, a representative for the singer told the Associated Press. Houston’s death comes on the eve of the Grammys and on the night of Clive Davis’ annual pre-Grammy gala, at which she performed last year and was expected to attend this year.

No cause of death has been announced and law enforcement sources said the singer was found in a hotel room at the Beverly Hilton, where emergency medical personnel were called sometime Saturday.

The Hilton is the scene for Davis’ annual gala. On Thursday, Houston dropped by the rehearsals to offer vocal tips for Brandy and Monica, who were slated to be one of the evening’s headliners.

Press, including The Times, were in attendance for a junket with the reunited R&B divas and Davis. Though Houston greeted people her with a warm smile, she appeared disheveled in mismatched clothes and hair that was dripping wet with either sweat or water.

The visibly bloated singer displayed erratic behavior throughout the afternoon -- flailing her hands frenetically as she spoke to Brandy and Monica, skipping around the ballroom in a child-like fashion and wandering aimlessly about the lobby. It was mentioned by a Grammy staffer that security personnel received calls of the singer doing handstands by the pool.

After leaving rehearsals, Houston returned to the ballroom -- with her teenage daughter Bobbi Kristina in tow -- as camera crews set up for interviews. The singer smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. A Grammy staffer said that during the interviews with Brandy, Monica and Clive, Houston was dancing just off camera to make the singers and Davis laugh. Grammy personnel expressed concern that she'd be caught on camera, and that reporters would write about her behavior.

Finally her daughter pulled Houston out of the room, and the singer skipped off. In our post of the event, we called Houston's behavior "loose and lively."

“She really loves and supports us both. For me, I went through a lot of very tumultuous moments and she would show up, not just with a phone call but physically when I needed,” Monica said when we asked about Houston coaching them. “That's something that I've carried with me, especially with all that she's been going through over the years herself. She's never turned her back on the people she cared about.”

Later that evening Houston appeared at Hollywood nightclub Tru, for fellow R&B singer Kelly Price’s pre-Grammy party. "Kelly Price & Friends Unplugged: For the Love of R&B" served as both a celebration and a jam session to preserve that genre, which was scaled back from eight categories to four this year.

Houston was billed as one of the evening’s special invited guests but after her appearance earlier it was shocking to see the singer arrive. More put together in her appearance, Houston briefly sang a duet with Price. In what has become her final performance, clips of the two singing a gospel hymn made the rounds because of the singer’s unsteady vocals.

"Whitney Houston, Pop Superstar, Dies at 48"

by

Jon Pareles and Adam Nagourney

February 11th, 2012

The New York Times

Whitney Houston, the multimillion-selling singer who emerged in the 1980s as one of her generation’s greatest R & B voices, only to deteriorate through years of cocaine use and an abusive marriage, died on Saturday in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 48.

Her death came as the music industry descended on Los Angeles for the annual celebration of the Grammy Awards, and Ms. Houston was — for all her difficulties over the years — one of its queens. She was staying at the Beverly Hilton hotel on Saturday to attend a pre-Grammy party being hosted by Clive Davis, the founder of Arista Records, who had been her pop mentor.

Ms. Houston was found in her room at 3:55 p.m., and paramedics spent close to 20 minutes trying to revive her, the authorities said. There was no immediate word on the cause of her death, but the authorities said there were no signs of foul play.

From the start of her career more than two decades ago, Ms. Houston had the talent, looks and pedigree of a pop superstar. She was the daughter of Cissy Houston, a gospel and pop singer who had backed up Aretha Franklin, and the cousin of Dionne Warwick. (Ms. Franklin is Ms. Houston’s godmother.)

Ms. Houston’s range spanned three octaves, and her voice was plush, vibrant and often spectacular. She could pour on the exuberant flourishes of gospel or peal a simple pop chorus; she could sing sweetly or unleash a sultry rasp.

Dressed in everything from formal gowns to T-shirts, she cultivated the image of a fun-loving but ardent good girl, the voice behind songs as perky as “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” and as torchy as what became her signature song, a version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”

But by the mid-1990s, even as she was moving into acting with films like “The Bodyguard” and “The Preacher’s Wife,” she became what she described, in a 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey, as a “heavy” user of marijuana and cocaine. By the 2000s she was struggling; her voice grew smaller, scratchier and less secure, and her performances grew erratic.

All of Ms. Houston’s studio albums were million-sellers, and two have sold more than 10 million copies in the United States alone: her 1985 debut album and the 1992 soundtrack to “The Bodyguard,” which includes “I Will Always Love You.”

But her marriage to the singer Bobby Brown — which was, at one point, documented in a Bravo reality television series, “Being Bobby Brown” — grew miserable, and in the 2000s, her singles slipped from the top 10. Ms. Houston became a tabloid subject: the National Enquirer ran a photo of her bathroom showing drug paraphernalia. And each new album — “Just Whitney” in 2002 and “I Look to You” in 2009 — became a comeback.

At Central Park in 2009, singing for “Good Morning America,” her voice was frayed, and on the world tour that followed the release of the album “I Look to You” that year, she was often shaky. Whitney Houston was born on Aug. 9, 1963, in Newark. She sang in church, and as a teenager in the 1970s and early 1980s, she worked as a backup studio singer and featured vocalist with acts including Chaka Khan, the Neville Brothers and Bill Laswell’s Material.

Mr. Davis signed her after hearing her perform in a New York City nightclub, and spent two years supervising production of the album “Whitney Houston,” which was released in 1985. It placed her remarkable voice in polished, catchy songs that straddled pop and R & B, and it included three No. 1 singles: “Saving All My Love for You,” “How Will I Know” and “The Greatest Love of All.”

Because Ms. Houston had been credited on previous recordings, including a 1984 duet with Teddy Pendergrass, she was ruled ineligible for the best new artist category of the Grammy Awards; the eligibility criteria have since been changed. But with “Saving All My Love for You,” she won her first Grammy award, for best female pop vocal performance, an award she would win twice more.

Her popularity soared for the next decade. Her second album, “Whitney,” in 1987, became the first album by a woman to enter the Billboard charts at No. 1, and it included four No. 1 singles. She shifted her pop slightly toward R & B on her third album, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” in 1990, which had three more No. 1 singles.

For much of the 1990s, she turned to acting, bolstered by her music. She played a pop diva in “The Bodyguard,” and its soundtrack album — including the hits “I Will Always Love You,” “I’m Every Woman,” “I Have Nothing” and “Run to You” — went on to sell 17 million copies in the United States. It won the Grammy for album of the year, and “I Will Always Love You” won record of the year (for a single). After making the films “Waiting To Exhale” in 1995 and “The Preacher’s Wife” in 1996 — which gave her the occasion to make a gospel album — Ms. Houston resumed her pop career with “My Love Is Your Love” in 1998.

Ms. Houston married Mr. Brown in 1992, and in 1993 they had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who survives her. Ms. Houston’s 2009 interview with Ms. Winfrey portrayed it as a passionate and then turbulent marriage, marred by drug use and by his professional jealousy, psychological abuse and physical confrontations. They divorced in 2007.

Her albums in the 2000s advanced a new persona for Ms. Houston. “Just Whitney,” in 2002, was defensive and scrappy, lashing out at the media and insisting on her loyalty to her man. Her most recent studio album, “I Look to You,” appeared in 2009, and it, too, reached No. 1. The album included a hard-headed breakup song, “Salute,” and a hymnlike anthem, “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.” Ms. Houston sang, “I crashed down and I tumbled, but I did not crumble/I got through all the pain,” in a voice that showed scars.

Neil R. Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which bestows the Grammys, called her “one of the world’s greatest pop singers of all time, who leaves behind a robust musical soundtrack.”

“A light has been dimmed in our music community today,” he said.

Lt. Mark Rosen, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department, said that emergency workers responded to a 911 call from security at the Beverly Hilton hotel on Wilshire Boulevard at 3:43 p.m., saying that Ms. Houston was unconscious in her fourth-floor suite. He said that some Fire Department personnel were already on the scene to help prepare for a pre-Grammy party.

Lieutenant Rosen said that detectives had arrived to conduct what he said was a full-scale investigation into the death. He said that Ms. Houston’s body was still in the hotel room as of 8 p.m. and would not be removed until the investigation was completed.

“There were no obvious signs of foul play,” he said. “It’s still fresh an investigation to know whether — the reality is she was too far too young to die and any time you have the death of someone this age it is the subject of an investigation.”

Ms. Houston arrived at the hotel with what Lieutenant Rosen described as an entourage of friends and family, some of whom were in the hotel suite at the time. He said that police had notified Ms. Houston’s mother and daughter of the death; it was unclear whether or not they were there.

At Mr. Davis’s party, where Ms. Houston was a regular guest and performer, tourists shot cellphone pictures of a police crime laboratory van parked outside. But inside, the glamour of the event seemed undiminished, even if Ms Houston’s name was on everyone’s lips

The streets in front of the Beverly Hilton, already crowded because of the Grammy Awards party taking place there, swarmed with reporters and fans, drawn by the news of this latest high-profile pop star dying in Los Angeles.

Even after the news of Ms. Houston’s death had been released, celebrities and other partygoers continued to arrive for the Davis event, which went on as planned, while fans stood behind a rope trying to take pictures. Dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos, people stepped out of limousines at curbside and streamed into the hotel.

A number of fans came to mourn Ms. Houston and to show their support. “I was in utter, total disbelief,” Lavetris Singleton said. “Who was not a fan of Whitney Houston at some point?”

“I want to show support because she inspired a lot of people and nobody’s perfect,” she said. “But if we’re not out here then she’ll be forgotten. We are her legacy.”

Performers at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, where the Grammys are to be held, heard about Ms. Houston’s death just as Rihanna and Coldplay were about to rehearse their number for the awards.

The show’s producer, Ken Ehrlich, debated about how to acknowledge Ms. Houston’s death. (The show is already scheduled to include a tribute by Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt to Etta James, the blues singer who died last month, as well as a video segment about music figures who died in 2011.)

After the initial shock, Mr. Ehrlich said he called Jennifer Hudson and asked her to come and sing one of Ms. Houston’s songs during the televised show on Sunday as a simple memorial. “We are going to do something very simple, not elaborate,” he said. “We just want to keep it respectful.”

"My feeling was it’s to early to do an extended tribute," Mr. Ehrlich added, "but we really wanted to remember her because she was so closely tied to the Grammys.”

Besides her daughter, now 18, Ms. Houston is survived by her mother. A woman who answered the telephone at the Edgewater, N.J., home of Ms. Houston’s mother on Saturday night said she would not speak to reporters.

It's Not Right, But It's Okay



Lashawn Ameen Daniels
Rodney Jerkins
Toni Estes
Frediii Jerkins
Isaac Phillips

Friday night you and your boys went out to eat
Then they hung out,but you came home around three
Now if six of ya'll went out
Then four of you were really cheap
'Cause only two of you had dinner
I found your credit card receipt

It's not right but it's okay
I'm gonna make it anyway
Pack your bags up and leave
And don't you dare come
Running back to me

It's not right but it's okay
I'm gonna make it anyway
Close the door behind you
Leave your key
I'd rather be alone than unhappy

I pack your bags so you can leave town for a week
The phone rings and then you look at me
(Why'd you turn and look at me)
You said it was one of your friends
Down on 54th Street
So why did 213 show up on your caller ID

I've been through all this before
So how could you think
That I would stand around
And take some more
Things are gonna change
'Cause I won't be your fool anymore
That's why you have to leave
So don't turn around to see my face
There's no more tears
Left here for you to see

Was it really worth you going out like that
See I'm moving on and I refuse to turn back
See all of this time I thought I had somebody
down for Whitney
It turns out you were making a fool of me

It's not right but it's okay
I'm gonna make it anyway
Pack your bags up and leave
And don't you dare come
Running back to me

It's not right,but it's okay
I'm gonna make it anyway
Close the door behind you
Leave your key
I'd rather be alone than unhappy

Whitney Houston [Wikipedia]