Whitney Houston
Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February
11, 2012), 48, died late yesterday just a day before the Grammy’s, an award she
conquered resoundingly during her hey days.
Life…
In 2009, the Guinness
World Records cited her as the most-awarded female act of all time.
Her list of
awards includes two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard
Music Awards, 22 American
Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. Houston
was also one of the world's best-selling
music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and
videos worldwide.
I know we all made jokes about her situation when the
stories started to spread of her drug addiction and the loss of form; infact,
concert goers at one of her many ‘come-back’ shows actually demanded a refund of
their ticket cost due to her poor performance.
It was such a fall from grace. I mean, she was the only
artist to chart seven consecutive No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits ("Saving
All My Love for You", "How Will I Know", "Greatest Love of
All", "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)", "Didn't
We Almost Have It All", "So Emotional" and "Where Do Broken
Hearts Go"). She was the second artist behind Elton John and the only
female artist to have two number-one Top Billboard 200 Album awards (formerly
"Top Pop Album") on the Billboard magazine year-end
charts.
Houston's 1985 debut album Whitney
Houston, became the best-selling debut album by a female act at the
time of its release. Her second studio album Whitney (1987), became the
first album by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 albums
chart.
Anyway, many will say all that ended with her marriage to
Bobby Brown…. This is where our opinions differ and I trust I will get
some flack, but allow me to explain…
'One's Destruction is from One's Hands'
The Yorubas have a saying that ‘Ayo l’onpa eni’, the literal translation of which is that it is exuberance that kills a person.
The Yorubas have a saying that ‘Ayo l’onpa eni’, the literal translation of which is that it is exuberance that kills a person.
An even looser translation is that sometimes, the trappings
of success or the unbridled expression of joy sometimes leads us to do things
which we would normally not do, which often backfires and may lead to one’s
downfall.
For someone who allegedly had a church background (child of
Cissy Houston, niece of Dionne Warwick & the Goddaughter of Aretha
Franklin), was under the Guardianship of Berry Goody, and had all the accolades above etc, not
only did she have a dalliance with Eddy Murphy (eew!) but found ‘love’ in Bobby
Brown and then took so easily to drugs.
My theory is that Whitney had always been into some form of social drug misuse, and it was under this cloud that she met and married Bobby; hence the 'using her own hand to do herself' title. Now, I am not holding court for Bobby, but this is a man with a well documented chequered past. He never denied his demons and lived comfortably with his issues; despite being forced out of his initial group – New Edition, for these same demons and lurid behavior, he went ahead to have a successful Solo career, so much so that the New Edition pleaded with him to come back and do a Reunion album.
This was a man who, despite his many court appearances for
misdemeanors and child-support, and the popular press’ thinly veiled attempt to
destroy his career (because he apparently was not worthy to marry their
‘starry-eyed velvet-voiced princess) still managed to guest-sing on a hit song
every other year (Beautiful, with Damian Marley. Thug Luving, with JaRule),
have his own reality show, and is currently looking clean and healthy and
working on a new album.
The man was, is, and will always smoke his crack. He is a ‘hood rat. And we know it. Even he knows it. And he is ok with it. But then
Whitney came along, with her plenty millions and access to heroin & coke...
and although it looked like everything changed, everything still stayed the same.
He had his women. They had his kids. And he had his crack.
The only stage of the adage of ‘Ayo ni nkpa eni’ that
affected Bobby was his disappearance from the music scene shortly after the
wedding. I mean, he didn’t need to work again; here was Whitney with money and
a drug habit to match, nay, exceed his own! It must have been ghetto-heaven. Nirvana.
But then Whitney went from strength to strength, or in this case,
bad-to-worse. From crack, to crack cocaine, to heroin. I even saw an interview
once where she said she was addicted to ‘making love’. True.
However, despite what the media might have you believe, it
was Bobby that tried to steer Whitney off her addiction to Coke & Heroin,
but her handlers would have none of it as they were all profiting from her hazy
state. Some of her family, together with the press, even went on to say he was
only after her money… Nigga please! This is a man with 16 kids; he can never
have enough money. He was comfortable with his demons and would have gladly
lived his life on without Whitney.
Anyway, Bobby left, picking up the pieces of his life and
advised Whitney to do the same…
But alas, now we see it was too little too late.
Whitney Elizabeth Houston, you will be greatly missed for
you were loved by many.
Growing up, there was a Whitney song in every kind of party;
beach, slumber/pajama, birthdays, etc. Infact, I remember Ronke Sota (nee
Eleso) had a Whitney Houston themed 21st Birthday party. Complete
with gown & hairstyle…
While I have many favorite Whitney songs; *All at Once, Just The Lonely Talking, All The Man That I Need, I’m Your Baby Tonight, and We Didn’t Know; I especially like Lover For Life. An extremely poignant song and a
frequent feature of my ‘Baby Making” & “Valentine’ playlists.
“And
when I find myself needing some lifting up
One night with you and that always
is enough
Hey you make being in love a true
rare affair
So take me I'm your prisoner
Will you sentence me to be your
lover for life”
However, in celebrating her and warning us all of the
tendency to get carried away with our ‘successes’, I implore you to give a
listen to *Raheem DeVaughn’s ‘Bullet Proof’….
Living like we bulletproof
We bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang
I say we load it, cock it, aim and
shoot
Oh we load it, cock it, aim and
shoot
Whitney, sun re o
ps: Lets help Majek now while we still can...
*click on the song titles to listen/download
Very Good DJ Biso! Every one is blaming Bobby Brown for the choices Whitney made. We are responsible for our choices as adults and playing the blame game does not change the reality....
ReplyDeleteShe has finished her race...
GOD BLESS HER FAMILY AND ALL WHO TRULY LOVED HER....
I so agree with us helping Majek Fashek before he becomes a twitter trend when he is dead and everyone starts eulogising him and putting 'send down the rain' on their facebook pages.
Thank you for yet another good read Bisola.
Bolanle
Well said Bolanle.
ReplyDeleteAfowofa is the bane of most of us.
We have been warned, we have seen it in history, but still, many of us will make the same mistakes.
May God continue to guard & guide us
Good people sometimes make very bad decisions. We see this all the time- in failed businesses; Even in people's personal lives, Some end up as single mums(you wonder how you ended up in bed with someone who will turn around and say all those horrible things men say when they are not ready to "settle down")and you are left to raise a child all by yourself.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks( therefore Dr.love may be correct assuming there had to have been a level of decay that attracted further decay: sometimes our sub- optimal decisions are taken for reasons known only to the individual and d maker.
Just be glad that your bad decision hasnt been exposed yet or has repercussions like that of whitney's.
You watch your back and pray or do whatever you can to ensure you
know what you are doing always and remember whose son or daughter you are!!! Never say never.
Whitney has ended her own journey, we are still works in progress.
All the best in life's journey.
Anon:
ReplyDeleteWell said.
May God in His infinite mercy continue to direct and redirect us all in the direction to fulfil His purpose for our lives.
Bisola, on Majek, I thought the Edo State Govt did reach out to Majek very recently but he upped and skipped town. It may have been pride or perhaps the rehabiliation was not carefully managed which left him without the needed help for long periods at a time. Either way, one needs to reach out to him yet again.
ReplyDeleteOn Whitney, I differ on the 'Afowofa' part though and I'll explain myelf in a moment.
I watched a documentary recently on drug use and the makers of that documentary brought together different sets of siblings, in pairs: one who'd never done drugs and the other, an addict. They mapped their brains and all sorts of brain tests and somehow concluded that people react to drugs in very many, differing ways.
You can have two very successful siblings living together under one roof and one will taste drugs and use it repeatedly with very minimal consequences while the other will descend very rapidly and sharply into gross degeneration. Whitney had begun recreational drug use, Marijuana, before she met Bobby which infact was the social setting within which she'd first encountered him, as Biso rightly stated in this blog.
Bringing her into his world was taking her out of realms within which she had control and into one where it would move from being an 'afowo fa' to being an illness and which would ultimately take her life. She was ill and no one did enough.
The Robert Downey's of the world with higher thresholds and booming media clarion calls for help, receive this help and bounce back stronger than before. The Whitneys and (hopefuly not) Macaulay Culkins perhaps will remain in that state or move from 'painfully anorexic' to 'rigor mortis' in a matter of months or years.
Did Bobby do enough to rescue her upon discovering that she the waters were closing up over her head? or did he give up too easily, citing his own personal issues as being overwhelming enough to bring hers into it as well?
If we look at these issues from a medical point of view as our default position, we might conclude that everyone connected with her drug use from the beginning had repeatedly failed her just to sate their selfish needs. If we treat it as a social problem, we'd slap all the blame on Whitney and bury her with the the same accolades with which we buried Ms Winehouse last year or Mr Jackson two years before.
What pains me most is that Aretha, her God mother, was diagnosed with un-operable Pancreatic Cancer two years ago.
Bisi A
Bisi, I see your point.
ReplyDeleteBut apparently, you don't see mine.
Afowofa:- To bring upon oneself...
What business does Whitney have (with her upbringing, social standing, solid family pedigree) with recreational drugs?
I am sure her mother must have repeatedly told her, like they told the rest of us, not to play with fire. But no, to her, it was just old wives tale.
Why wont someone react to drugs in a bad way? is that not the designed reaction? to create an addict for repeat business.
Infact, and more fundamental, why take the drugs in the first place?
Are you going to tell me we didn't come accross drugs (socially & otherwise) when we were growing up? How many nights did we trawl bar beach and numerous dingy clubs in Lagos? Why didnt you succumb and take? And let the Ibadan High Chief beat the living daylights out of you?
Hence my next adage - 'ayo ni'n pa eni'.
She was succesful. A prodigy. Pprobably felt normal drug-body-mind chemistry didnt apply to her, afterall she was a star.
What is not good is not good. Period.
Which is why I wonder why that poor girl still married you.
Dont they have a Prayer Warrior in their family?
Interesting piece Biso.
ReplyDeleteThe Don
DeleteThe Mafia boss responds with one line. Typically Mafiosi.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I see your point as well DJ Biso. Nice piece all the same.
Nice one Bisola.
ReplyDelete