The Whitney Houston Story; One of our times’ greatest tragedies.

Black, beautiful, talented,diva.These were all characteristics of American award-winning music legend and superstar Whitney Elizabeth Houston in the years spanning from the late 1980s to around 1998.At the time, the star enjoyed a large army of multi-racial fans who loved and supported her. She was the star that made Arista Records and has been their most profitable musician to date.Then the perfect image the world had known came crushing and tumbling in what later became the world’s most popular self-destructive tale way worse than Elvis Presley’s and Michael Jackson’s. “The voice” as she was fondly referred to by her fans and the scandal hungry media became a symbol of drugs, bankruptcy and loss. This week when the untimely passing of 22 year old Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter and heiress of Whitney Houston, I could not help muttering ‘what a waste’ in utter disappointment. No one deserves such a terrible end. Most especially when you’re the ‘only’ surviving carrier of a big legacy like the Houstons’.It was like life was still punishing Whitney for her mistakes in life even from the other side. Her only daughter had died after months of media debates and unwanted attention as to whether the troubled star’s child would make it. Her great legacy had been cut off for good in a tragic and brutally short manner. It was as if some invisible powerful hand was writing a script in which a rich troubled child ends up dead in the same infamous manner her famous superstar mother did a few months after getting the first installment of her million dollar inheritance. The Whitney Houston story is going to haunt coming generations and will be spoken of as the great tragedy in which an icon who had it all was dramatically reduced to nothing. It will probably be bigger than Marilyn Monroe’s or Elvis Presley’s stories. Many will blame her daughter’s demise on her life choices and the exposure she was raised in. Few people can comprehend how a woman who earned millions of dollars in tours, was on the list of best-selling artistes ended up drowning in debts, hooked on drugs, bankruptcy and living off handouts from old friends and former mentors. How one of the powerful names of music passed on and the people partying downstairs continued unbothered by a fact that the golden girl of Newark lay dead in a room exactly above them.
I was in love with Whitney for as long as I could remember and like the loyal fan I was, I often sat in heated losing exhausting arguments defending her among my friends who were always quick to judge whenever a new scandal was brewing. If photographs of her drug littered bathrooms hadn’t leaked, it was an infamous Diane Sawyer interview in which she had bragged about how she was too rich to smoke crack or playing cougar to young boys in the industry…Whitney always found a way (am sure not intentionally) to be at the eye of a huge scandal at all times even with no hits on any countdown. However, the funny thing is I sort of identified with her. I always wondered if I once got lucky enough to be as talented, famous and rich as she was, would I be able to keep my act together? I understood the pressure she faced. Several people around her have usually intimated that she was always under  so much pressure to be perfect because she wondered if she was good enough or doing her best. Having to endure the magnitude of pressure that Whitney lived while trying to keep up to the world’s highly placed expectations of her must be excruciating enough to drain out anyone’s fighting spirit. Being a huge sensation in music, film. modeling and production, Whitney found herself in the claws of drug and substance abuse when her marriage and family turned out to be characterized by deception, abuse and infidelity. Don’t forget the highly publicized 1992 miscarriage during the filming of The Bodyguard. These things were just the last claw.
The thing with Whitney is that the years she spent when she was ‘perfect’ were highly disturbing in a’ too good to be true’ way. She was introduced to the world as that sweet little girl with the powerful voice. Whitney was ‘moral’ as per public standards, having a church background and despite her fame, she dated only three men and married one. She was also music royalty as her mother Cissy Houston is a gospel musician; godmother is Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick her cousin. The need to find something wrong with her must have been great and massive. So when the drugs and failing marriage were exposed, it was a huge jaw dropping revelation that Whitney never recovered from. Whitney’s whole family depended on her for survival. The thing with the music industry is that its very selfish and majority of the people there are never true friends, all they care about are themselves. I was keen to watch the tribute messages that kept pouring in from other celebrities and they all talked about how they couldn’t do anything because of the grief, how they suffered…none talked about Whitney, her legacy and her accomplishments. Even Clive Davis, her mentor and Brandy her close friend and rumored sister in law partied away at a banquet downstairs unbothered.  A greedy individual photographed Whitney’s body while on Tyler Perry’s jet and sold it anonymously for some dollars. Her personal effects went on sale hours after her burial. The Houstons even made a reality televised show after Whitney’s demise, an action that painted them as greedy, selfish lot that would dare to try to earn from their daughter’s death. Bobbi Kristina was no stranger to scandal. Her engagement to her adopted brother was a shocker. She also widely criticized actress and director Angela Bassel for not casting her to portray her late mother in her biopic movie about the fallen star titled Whitney, an attack to which Bassel responded that acting is an art and Bobbi was simply not an actress. Bassel had acted with Whitney on the hit movie Waiting to Exhale. She however was surrounded by the same greedy people as seen from the vast discussions on her huge inheritance and wealth as she lay waiting for death in hospice care to her leaked photograph as she lay unconscious on life support. Also, former talk show queen and media mogul Oprah Winfrey has been painted selfish for jumping from retirement and making a special tell all show to discuss Bobbi Kristina and how she is coping with life after her mother’s demise with critics saying Winifrey just wanted to share the spotlight and hike her network’s ratings.
Self-destructive and suicidal, mother to daughter’s fate seemed to have been sealed as tragic for a very longtime. For years, Whitney had been a time bomb waiting to go off and when it did, the greatest casualty was her own daughter who could not cope with life after and without her mother. Am not a believer in the Illuminati conspiracy theory but I believe behind the music industry are powerful men who drain the artistes and exploit them to maximum potential, who do all it takes to have one in their control and this could span from controlling these people’s private lives to hooking them to drugs. Men with so much power that they can propel an over demanding unproductive artiste to their graves after realizing that they are worth more to them as dead than alive. Clive Davis was this man in Whitney’s life. If I believed in the Illuminati, I would say that all that is happening to Whitney is a form of exemplary punishment being meted out to deter more disobedience similar to the Kennedy family curse. Having been a perfectionist once too, I never judge Whitney. Truth of the matter is, for generations to come, we will tell our children and their children the story of a beautiful talented young woman with the greatest voice in music history who grew to become so popular, advocated for Nelson Mandela during apartheid, started a foundation to care for the needy, gave us classic albums and went on to become the most awarded female act of all time and how she had sunk low never to rise again, soaked in years of debt, drug abuse, scandal, domestic violence and how she died young at 48, weeks after announcing a comeback. Death did not give the decency to allow her to complete her album and enjoy the fruits of her Sparkle movie her last project. However like all stories…most especially the tragedies comes a lesson, a moral of the story of sorts. As we tell our daughters to work hard to reach fame, fortune and prominence, we will add caution and warning of the world that awaits them, the price people pay for fame and how all that glitters is not gold. Truth of the matter is am not exaggerating and being over sympathetic for Whitney and Kristina had a life way above the wildest dreams of many people but at times inner strength is basic to survive. The Whitney Houston story will always be one we remember to show us that in some situations, strength, perseverance, hope, love and self-control are crucial for survival and do weigh more than fame, fortune, power and affluence. That was for the case with Whitney and Bobbi. Rest in peace mother and daughter. For Whitney, her legacy will continue living through her life’s works and yes, the tragedy she has written.

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